Author Jillian Chantel

Not to knock AA, NA, or any of those wonderful organizations that help a lot of people, but I feel like I'm at a twelve step meeting. Hello, my name is Jillian Chantal, I'm a writer at Desert Breeze Publishing and I own an e-reader.

My Sony e-reader has been my friend and has also been my foe. I have the Sony touch screen version. I got it over a year ago and initially was not enamored of it at all. One problem was that it didn't come with an owner's manual or even a one page "for dummies" diagram on how to use the thing. That was a big reason I didn't use it at first. I'm a bit of a technophobe. Well, not really phobic about it but I'm convinced I have some kind of chemical in my body that really, really hates electronics. If a device can go wrong, in my hands, it will.

Once I played with the little demon for a bit, I figured out how to upload books to it as well as the other features. That was nice but it really would have been great to have a user's guide. I enjoyed reading on it. I liked that I could adjust the size of the print and could carry the thing in my purse. It's very light. I'm happy that I can upload pdfs to it and can make notes. My version has the touch screen and I like that feature for some purposes but not for others. I use the little buttons at the bottom of the device to turn the pages because the touch feature requires almost a hard shove as opposed to a small little brush of the fingertips. I use the touch feature to choose the book I want to read and to open the other screens. One thing I do wish is that it had wireless download, although since I download to the computer first, I have the books in two places and that's nice, too.


A great thing about the Sony is the ability to travel with it- I can take a lot of books in one small package- no large, heavy books to carry in the airport; however, there is a down side to airplane travel with it. You can't have it on at the beginning of the flight nor near the end of the flight. That's about 30 minutes of good reading time lost. In fact, I've been in the middle of an exciting chapter more than once and had to shut it off. Now, let me say, this would be true for any such device so I don't hold it against my little old Sony.



One other thing I didn't foresee with this device is the amount of attention it attracts. Every time I try to read in public on my lunch break, someone asks me what it is and I have to show all that it does. Now, this is good as an e-published writer as I can show them it's nothing to be afraid of using and even bring up that I'm a writer. It's not so good when I want to read and be left alone. If I was a single girl, I might consider the interruptions by attractive men to be a good thing. As it is, I would rather read in peace, thank you.

I've got a great little red leather cover on mine and it's just too cute. It makes it easier to hold when reading. It even feels like a book!