I’ve occasionally mentioned, here and on Twitter, that I love books - not just reading, but the actual, physical objects, and try to surround myself with them. That “surrounding” is, in fact, literal since I don’t have much space in my room, and I long ago ran out of shelf space and have to stack new volumes on the floor. It’s something like stuffing the Library of Alexandria into a broom closet, or Yomiko’s room from R.O.D.
Though I haven’t mentioned it recently, I’ve long suffered from bibliophilia. I say ‘suffer’ because it is something of a disease. Though I do occasionally sell a handful of books, I buy far more than I sell, and significantly more than I can even read. I’ve got three completely full bookcases, have taken over a couple other shelves in other parts of the house, and also have a stack on my floor.
I bought the Kindle 2 early last Spring, but despite using it heavily through the following Summer I’ve essentially abandoned the device, not having used it for a few months now.
Partly the reasons are just practical things that will likely be (and in some cases have been) alleviated in future versions. No colour, no support for Japanese text, spotty availability for books I want, lousy formatting for others, and a few other nuisances. To the Kindle’s credit, there is still a lot of material available, I do like the iPhone app, and I especially like how it handles annotations and dicionary lookup.