The Gift that Keeps on Giving

Some of my friends have told me that I like to "promote" things that I like to the point where they feel like they are on The Truman Show. I am completely serious. I actually thought that comparison was pretty funny - but I still do it to this day.

Some of my favorite things are:

Tide Pen (am I right?)

Peanut Butter Puffins Cereal

All Small N Mighty Detergent (I like how they are all lined up like a gang of superheroes).

..and no, I was not compensated to say those things above. I just love to tell my friends about things I love. :) The main reason for the post was to tell you all how much I love my.... KINDLE! It is truly the gift that keeps on giving. Jake and I both unknowingly bought each other kindles for Christmas 2011 and it was a complete surprise to both of us. We filmed ourselves opening our gifts, I kind of want to watch our video to see my reaction. I feel like that should be on a commercial or something. Maybe Amazon will see this and give us free stuff?

Many of you might know that I am an avid reader and I was pretty skeptical about the kindle at first. I like the touch and feel of a book in my hand and there is real research that shows the number of books in a parent's home affects how educated their children become. My aunt also told me this story about my cousin -- in elementary school, she was assigned a homework task: She had to come home and physically count how many books were in their home.  If you know my aunt, who is a teacher, she has literally thousands of books and there was no way that my little cousin could count them all in one night. When she got to school the next day, one of her classmates asked the teacher if the phone book counted towards her book count because that was the only one she could find! :( Needless to say, books are very important to me. But, as technology changes I am definitely embracing the kindle. I have been able to borrow books from the Seattle Public Library -- and its amazing. You just put your name on the waitlist (if there is one), get an email when the kindle book becomes available for you, download it wireless through Amazon.com and there you have it! Ready to read in 5 minutes! And you get to borrow it for 21 days and... here is the best part... it returns itself automatically and you can never get charged late fees! Amazing! I love it! I cannot wait to use it on our honeymoon - I will probably read several books during those two weeks (at least for the 15 hr plane ride there and back.... ughhhh...). I also wanted to share some of my favorite reads lately (all free from the library):

The Poisoner's Handbook

The Night Circus

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Have you read any of these? By the way -- Are you on goodreads.com? If not - you should sign up! Think of it as Netflix for books but without the rental part. You just rate books that you have already read and it suggests books that you would be interested in based on your ratings. Share your favorite reads in the comment section below!