Working with O Hotel Suites, I'm finding that it's not uncommon for travellers on extended stays to leave behind a number of books that they purchased during their visit, but don't want to cram into their suitcases for the trip home. That can all change now. Finally, after more than two years of waiting and watching book lovers in the U.S. luxuriate in the technologically sleek and inexpensive e-book readers, the Kindle is coming to Canada. Even though it's been around since 2007, there are still some people who have no idea what a Kindle is. Strange I know, but then I am something of a nerd. For those of us who know what a Kindle is, and want it more that a child on Christmas Eve wants the morning to come, there isn't that much more to say about it. However, at the bottom of this article you'll find a link to a page where you can buy one, and a another link to a page where you can read about all of the awesome features and refinements included in the Kindle 2. For anyone who doesn't understand the glory of the Kindle, keep reading and I'll explain it to you.

The Kindle, pictured above is the Kindle 2, is an e-book reader. It was specifically designed by Amazon to usher in a new era of publication. Not only can a Kindle have electronic versions of new works loaded onto it after purchasing them on Amazon, but it also surfs the net on that wireless 3G network that every cell phone company has been babbling about for so long. This means that you can use your Kindle to buy, or download free copies, of books in almost every major city in the world. How many books could possibly be available you ask? Well I'll tell you, as well as Amazon there are fifteen other distributors of e-books that hold a combined library of over two million, one hundred and eleven thousand, and five hundred titles. That's 2,111,500 different books that you can buy for about $15 a piece. Also, through sites like Project Gutenberg and Munseys, there are over 48,000 books that you can download for free. The download times for new books are exceptionally fast. The Kindle product page on amazon.com boasts that new books can be downloaded in under a minute.
The Kindle can also be configured to automatically receive the digital versions of your favourite periodicals. It can do the same thing for Atom and RSS feeds, which means you can get updates from everything from the stock market to your favourite blog constantly downloading onto your Kindle for your viewing pleasure. Really, anything that was developed on the web recently has an RSS feed, so there isn't much you wouldn't be able to read with this thing.
However, as cool as the Kindle is it will never replace real books for me. There's something about owning a book and having it in your bookcase that can never be eaned from having some data stored on a hard drive. Speaking for myself, I'll still buy the books I love and keep them in places of honour in my many bookshelves. That's not to say that I won't go buy a Kindle, though. For an extended trip anywhere in the world, bringing a Kindle along makes a lot more sense to me than bringing a bunch of books. There's also the added benefit of being able to add to your travel collection at any time, and being able to get your local news anywhere there's a 3G network.
To grab yourself a Kindle head over to
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0015T963C?tag=literaryawa06-20&ie=UTF8
To read more about them, go to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle