Happy New Year! What is everyone’s New Year’s resolutions? One of the motel’s is to purchase less physical books.

One too many times, I’ve impulsively bought a book, only to: 1). Not like it and thereby, 2). Never finishing it. The book then gets collected with dust and sits on my bookshelf, untouched and unloved.

I’m quite selective with the books I choose to keep on my bookshelf. Each title must have some sort of significant impact, and it certainly must be a story or notion that I would happily enjoy sifting through again and again.

This sense of selectivity then poses a dilemma. What if I simply want to read a book to see what it’s about? What if I just want to try?

I used to abhor e-books, thinking it was too “modernized” and “a sign of the times.”

But recently, I’ve enjoyed them very much. They are, for one, convenient. My old job had a lot of downtime, which bored me to tears. To occupy my time, I’d discreetly open up my Kindle Cloud Reader and simply read. Before I knew it, it’d be 5pm and I’d gotten some good reading done. What a win-win!

I also find that e-books are extremely useful for absorbing information that would otherwise be mentally exhausting. Books that are extremely dense for example, can be difficult to read, especially with modern day attention spans. On an e-book, I find myself more able to read through a long or complicated story without stifling the same yawn and disinterest that would ensue with a physical copy.

Thus, I recommend mainly turning to e-books for the following genres:

• Non-fiction
• Classic fiction (aka books that are a bit more difficult to read)
• Any books with ugly covers (you know what I mean)

In the modern age, we are used to reading things online as it is, be it the news or even this very blog. What made an e-book any different, I wondered. Not very much.

I would still opt for a physical copy when it comes to fiction or various illustrated books. If You Give a Mouse a Cookie for example, would be much more delightful if read through a physical copy.

Many Kindle versions on Amazon are less expensive than the physical copy. Moreover, I’d discovered that many libraries offer e-books for various titles, which makes accessing them even easier (and free!).

For anyone who wants to read more but can’t find the motivation, hopefully the e-book strategy helps. Everything takes practice and at the end of the day, reading is for yourself and nobody else. My Work Uncle once told me that in English class, we were always taught to analyze and decipher everything we read, and how that is no longer necessarily required when reading for fun and intellectual stimulation. How great is that?

Happy reading, everyone!