Me: My Kindle! It’s dead! Nooo! No! This is terrible. This is like the Library of Alexandria burning down all over again. Oh. Wait. False alarm. It’s not dead. it just passed out again.
Husband: Did you just compare your Kindle to The Library of Alexandria? That’s hyperbole.
Me: Oh really. How do you know what was in the Library of Alexandria?

He doesn’t, because it burned down. The Library of Alexandria totally could have contained The Hunger Games trilogy, every Robert Louis Stevenson book ever written, the proofs of my own book and a freshly-ordered copy of The Night Circus by Erin Morganstern. Sure it could have. We will never know. So basically my husband is just making guesses here.

No kidding.

This is a certainty though: Kindle DX is well on its way to its demise. It sleeps far too much these days. And there are times, like tonight, when I can’t wake it up without a fight. And one of these days, I won’t be able to wake it up at all.

This bothers me because I can’t get a replacement DX; Amazon isn’t making them anymore. And because I love my DX. It’s got my library on it. I need it.

The poor thing, though, was an early model and it just wants to die. It is still chugging along, but it’s slowly decaying like a biter in The Walking Dead. First the power cord disintegrated because it was allergic to sunlight (Amazon was nice enough to replace that). Then the five-way mouse split down the center. (But we’re still using it.) Now the software appears to be on the fritz.

I get that it’s probably time for a new Kindle, but I don’t want another Kindle. I’m emotional about this reader in the way I’m not about laptops and cell phones. This Kindle has been my book for hundreds of novels. It’s been A Thousand Acres. It’s been Anna Karenina. It’s been The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It’s been a graphic novel, twice. And dammit, I was planning on it being The Night Circus right about now.

Technology is temporary, but books are forever, right?

Except that they aren’t. Because well, the Library of Alexandria.