Reading books was boring when I was younger. They are long and take effort and you can’t just sit down and watch a book, you have to make a time commitment and put real effort into the thing.

Honestly I wasn’t interested in all of that work when I could go play outside or watch TV. Things changed for me in third grade though. I remember that my sister practically forced me to read her favorite book so that she would “have somebody to talk to about it.” Begrudgingly I read that book and have never stopped reading since.

There was something so satisfying in reading a book and flipping that last page over and realizing you finished something you started. However that sense of accomplishment has changed since 2011. Books are being replaced with their technological counterparts, E-Readers where the actual turning of pages is nonexistent.

I got my kindle last year for Christmas and, personally, it was a hard transition for me. I held out for a while because I wanted to remain loyal to my real life, paperback books, but the pressure was too much.

I loved the gratification of turning pages and being able to physically see how much I read. I loved having the books I read in my room and I believed that I would be dishonoring real books by reading them on a Kindle. What I found, though, was that there are advantages to reading on books and there are advantages to reading on E-Readers.

Books are heavy. This was problem number one for me. When I went on vacation, I could never decide which books to bring so I always ended up bringing around 10 and packing my backpack up until it was close to thirty pounds.

The second thing I found difficult was reading at night. With real books you are forced to keep the lights on and then inevitably turn it off when you get tired and that was always a hassle for me.

The third problem was the actual book. When I would try to read on the couch or in my bed it was almost impossible to lay down with the book staying open.

My kindle solves a lot of these problems but also has its own issues. With my Kindle, I can take it with me everywhere. I can fit those ten books into the space of what one half of a real book would take up.

The kindle is backlit so that reading at night is not a problem and small enough that reading in any position is easy and comfortable. However, it in itself has issues. I have a Kindle Fire and you have to charge it pretty regularly, the battery life can be annoying as well as lugging around the charger.

Also the Kindle Fire is, in essence, a tablet so, if you try to read in the sun, it has an awful glare. I know that other types of E-Readers have fixes for these problems, but with my own kindle they are pretty annoying.

The final and most obvious issue is that they cost money to buy. Not only do you have to buy or loan the books, you have to buy the actual machine. Kindles can break and books cannot (for the most part).

Kindles and other E-Readers have a lot of benefits. They save paper, space, time and they save you from getting out of bed to turn the lights off. But, there is still something so enticing to me about reading a real book. It is how stories were made to be read.

Maybe I’m a sucker for the sense of accomplishment I get when finishing a real book, but it was hard for me to accept my Kindle. I read a book the other day on my Kindle and only realized I had finished it because I was spit back out onto the homescreen. What I have learned living my double reading life is that I like both for different reasons.

You do not have to feel guilty for leaving behind real books to read on a Kindle, because they will always be waiting for you when technology fails.