walkitout | Discovery and e-books (Reply)

When I was Much Younger, it was a lot harder to find books to read that I would like. Part of this was an artifact of my social isolation, in turn, a result of the combined negative effects of being on the spectrum and growing up a Jehovah's Witness. Once I got to college and later, I found new authors to read through electronic fora: UW's bb, and later, rec.arts.books and rec.arts.sf.written on Usenet. This intermediary, electronic step helped me develop friends who also read a lot and overlapped on preferences and these days, I find new books to read through a combination of friends' recommendations, independent review sites and store reviews.

I've bought kindles for several different people, and in a couple of cases in the family, I've shared my account with them, at least initially, as a way of easing them into e-books. In one of these cases, I've developed more awareness of what the person was reading, but didn't find much overlap (not surprising). But in another of these cases, I'm finding that I'm reading a ton of what she's reading and, at times, tapping my foot waiting for her to finish so we don't screw each other up with whispersync.

I don't know if this is a long term situation. But I love it, and it's the closest I've come to a few beautiful years in my early 30s when I was trading paper bags full of trashy novels with a few friends.