Hello to a New Year and goodbye to Trump and Amazon Kindle. I'm ditching both of them. I thank the 74+ million other Americans who contributed to Joe Biden's win. Now I can channel all my worry to the pandemic and not have to deal with a pathological president. As for Amazon Kindle, I've had it for three years. I enjoy e-readers because I can store lots of books on them, look up unfamiliar words, jump back to a section to check on where a character was first introduced, change the font, read without a light as well as read in a sunny location, and so on. The only thing I don't like about the Kindle is that Amazon owns it.
I read 60 books in 2020 and 51 books in 2019. Most, but not all, were e-books. The vast majority I purchased from Amazon because the Kindle uses a proprietary format that doesn't support e-books from other sellers. This year I decided to support independent booksellers. After some research, I learned that Kobu e-books are available through one of my favorite bookstores—Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle (see image). Until the pandemic, I visited that book store every time I went to Seattle, which was at least twice a year. Besides books, they have an awesome cafe.
Elliott Bay sells Kobu e-books through their website but they require a Kobu e-reader. So I bought one to replace the Kindle. The great thing about Kobu is that most libraries in the US and Canada loan books through the Kobu app. The bookstore provided instructions on how I can set up the Kobu to get the same sort of instant delivery that Amazon provides when buying a Kindle book.