*Kindle

“Kindle-what else?”

I suppose I should’ve been unsurprised when my Kindle hit the floor and promptly fell into disrepair, with no visible issues, but the screen was permanently damaged. Well, I had used it for three years, after all. I use this Kindle (what else would I be reviewing? A copy of Twilight?) pretty much every day, as I am an avid middle-school consumer of popular book series, and I enjoy reading fanfiction. Good fanfiction, mind you, not meaningless fluff stories with little to no plot, terrifying grammar, and an author whose main purpose in life is to ship a couple that has already sunk. I read Harry Potter, the Heroes of Olympus series, the Hunger Games series, the Divergent series, the Fault in Our Stars, and a light smattering of various Jane Austen-y classics. Gone With the Wind, anyone?

Considering that this was an eighty-dollar piece of electronics and not a several-hundred dollar iPhone 6 that is basically its predecessor but thinner, my Kindle worked fantastically well. Features include bookmarking, the ability to take notes, highlight your favorite passages, and viewing popular quotes highlighted by other readers. At the bottom of the screen sat a small bar which displayed how far through the book you were, and the settings toolbar allowed you to jump chapters. It responded with lightning speed, whether I was turning pages with dual tabs on either side of the device, or tapping away on the keyboard built into the Kindle. I was able to smoothly navigate between different volumes depicting life at Hogwarts, and games loaded under fifteen seconds, an impressive feat considering the lethargy of certain Web browsers (*cough Internet Explorer which my father still uses despite its obvious incompetence cough*).

I suppose I did have some grievances about this Kindle. Firstly, when I wanted to download new books from the Kindle Store, it took me about half a minute to reach their site. I do not recommend going on your email on this device, as the quality will be pathetic, and your time will be wasted. Of course, if you have an entire afternoon on your hands while you are sitting in the lobby of a hospital, by all means, go ahead. Secondly, I would like to see Amazon include in their newest model of Kindle Voyages less, ah, monotonous audiobook voices, as I fell asleep once listening to Mockingjay. Well, in their defence, it was two in the morning.

I would rate this Kindle four out of five stars, as, while I was satisfied, I finish books in under a week (I mean books over five hundred pages long), and so I was a little miffed about the length of time needed to access the KIndle Store. This Kindle lived up to most of my expectations, which was to have a portable device which could store my sizable collection of novels. This Kindle was durable, as its screen only shattered after three years of use. I encourage readers like me to purchase a Kindle, if you are considering buying one in the near future. Happy Reading!