When the iPad first came out, I somehow convinced myself that the Kindle was dead. Apple had managed to create something where you could not only read books, but also do everything else. Why on earth would anyone still cling to a single-purpose device like the Kindle? Surely this would be like carrying an iPod in one pocket and an iPhone in the other — pointless!

Ha! What really happened, of course, was much more subtle. Instead of killing the Kindle, the iPad just killed my desire to read books. From the time I got the first iPad until I rediscovered the Kindle this Christmas, I don’t think I finished a single book.

It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the technology story template of “Kindle killer”. A new product is usually always, and lazily, described in not so much what it does, but what it KILLS! If it bleeds, it leads.

Thankfully that delusion has now worn off and I’m back in love with e-ink and have finished four books since Christmas.

I still don’t understand why I can read blogs, news, and code on a screen all day with nary a complaint, but I can’t finish a book on the iPad. But I’m not going to argue, I’m just glad that I’m reading books again.