Attack of the Kindle Cases

I don’t just write Kindle books, I read them too. Which of course means that I have to keep my Kindle in a case, because I’m not about to carry around a skinny $180 piece of plastic without protecting it. So, one Kindle means one case, right?

Wrong.

Why do I need seven cases for one Kindle, you ask? Well, you might as well ask why I need eight cases for one iPod! Obviously it’s because I’m incapable of making up my mind. But it’s not my fault. I like all my cases in different ways, but they each have at least one characteristic that bugs the crap out of me, thus forcing me to buy a new one. Let’s look at one, shall we?

This is my first Kindle case. As you can see, it is orange. Mmmmm, orange. It is made of leather and has a nice elastic strap (with an Amazon-branded pull tab!) to hold it closed. The interior is made of a nice soft material, and it even has a built-in pull-out light.

What could be wrong with this cover, you ask? It’s leather, it’s orange, it has a strap, it’s orange, it has a built-in light, it’s orange, you can reverse the strap to hold it open, and it’s orange. All good things. However, it has one major problem: It won’t stand up by itself. As I do most of my reading when I’m on lunch, having to give up a free hand to hold my Kindle eventually got tedious. Plus at some point it occurred to me that I would rather use the Kindle’s battery to power the Kindle rather than to power the light, but that was secondary.

Even so, this cover was not cheap — at $60, it’s still the most expensive one I own. So I might have stuck with it anyway, if I hadn’t seen and fallen for a pretty face. But that’s a story for another time — next week, perhaps.

Oh, speaking of Kindle books … in case anyone is wondering, I am still working on the final revision to part one of “the big book”, AKA Shards.  It should be ready in a few more months, and then I will get to work revising part two.  In the meantime, though, all my other Kindle books are still available, and the ones where I control the pricing (including the former #1 Epic Fantasy Kindle e-book in the UK, Dragon Stones) are only $2.99.  Get ’em while they’re, um, electronic!