Reasons To Get Your First E-Reader (and why it should be a NookColor):

I was talking to a friend of mine who was considering getting a NookColor and I decided to gather my thoughts about my new favorite gadget and share them with her.  After my gigantic email, I decided to share my feelings with more people and I posted this on the B&N threads.  Just recently one of my followers asked me to share my thoughts about the NookColor too, so I decided I should repost my thoughts for a third time, here on my blog.  I'm so excited to be a NookColor owner now and I think most people who get one will agree for these following reasons:

Portability -  I love being able to take dozens or hundreds of books with me wherever I go.

Increased function -  Having the internet, apps, Pandora, chess, etc. at my fingertips is awesome!  Sometimes I wake up and browse the internet before going out to the rest of the house to deal with my crazy dogs.  I can just pretend I'm still asleep!  Oh and if you want to bother with converting files, you can convert movies to a format the NookColor can play.  A lot of people do that and save some favorite movies to micro-SD cards for trips.

Aesthetics -  The covers available are beautiful and I have a lovely wallpaper that matches the skin I bought too.  You can buy them online.  I really loved many of the choices from Decal Girl, but I went with one called 'Aqua Burn' and I think it's great!  With all the color possibilities on the NookColor screen it's almost like a work of art too.  I love arranging my TBR list by color, it's pretty to slide through and see greens fade to blues and such.

The social aspects -  Being able to quote my favorite parts and post on Facebook right from my NookColor is pretty cool and the LendMe feature gets me talking and sharing current reads with my friends.  I just hope to get a few more friends on there and utilize the feature even more.

The capacitive touch screen -  I don't know if you've used one yet, but the capacitive touch screen is amazing.  I had never used a device with this technology before and I was so delighted with it.  Just brush your fingertip ever so lightly and you can change the page or zoom in.  I can barely get to my phone to work now, because I'm not used to pressing so hard anymore!

The illumination -   I love the back-lit display.  Many claim that it's stressful to your eyes, but I haven't found that to be true at all.  My eyes strain more trying to read the darker words near the center crack of the book or to read at all when my husband is trying to sleep.  The screen has a wide range of brightness options and at the darkest, it barely looks back-lit at all.   It also has 6 color setups for various reading options.   I personally like sepia on a dim background, but if I am outside in the sun I pick the night setting, which is black with white text, with a bright back-light.

The size -  I love holding a slim, lightweight device to read now.  I just got a hardcover book (because it doesn't seem like it will be available on the NookColor anytime soon) and it's so hard to read.  It's heavy, clunky, clumsy and I really miss the illumination shining from behind my words, almost lifting them off the page to meet my eyes.  Paper words just sit there, almost hiding from me.

The wishlist and bookstore on the Nook -  One of my favorite things is that I can browse the virtual bookshelves for hours anytime, anywhere.  That used to be one of my favorite things, just looking for books and seeing the options.  Now, I can do that at home too!  I have over 100 books on my wishlist now and it's like my own personalized bookstore.   I spend hours sometimes just reading samples and deciding which ones I really want or not.  I have never been so exposed to so many books before.  It's really fun!

The prices -  While some books are more expensive than Amazon or a paperback, they're often cheaper than hardcover and they offer a lot of free or discounted books that you wouldn't have the chance to check for at a bookstore.  And, obviously, there are never free books at the bookstore, but NookColor has Free Fridays and dozens of others always offered for free.  You can also get HUGE anthologies for just a couple bucks.  They have several collections of 50 books for $2.99 and most classic books are only .99 if you can't find them in an anthology.  Then, the really old books are almost always free, but expect a lot of errors, because they were converted by volunteers.

No lost or stolen books ever again -  How many great books have you lent out never to be seen again?  I know my list is huge.  I love sharing my favorite reads, just so others can experience what I did, but I certainly miss my books when they never come back too!  Thankfully LendMe gives me a chance to have a bit of both.  Sure, not every book is a LendMe, but I can still share quotes from any book online, so if I can't lend it, I can still share a laugh or a memorable part easily.  Then, the best part is my books will always be mine!  I am never buying multiple copies of a book ever again!  That will probably return the cost of the NookColor to me in a few years alone.  My online virtual library is always mine, so no matter what happens to my Nook, I still have all my books, ready to be connected to my new Nook or to be read on my computer in the meantime.

LendMe books -  Sure, it's only one lending ever and some books don't even have that, but even with its limited use, it's still fun to share my current reads with my friends.  I can introduce new authors or series to my friends who might not have read them otherwise and vice versa.

Organization -  Sometimes I get bored of a book, but I eventually want to finish it.  Sometimes they get lost in the shuffle if I stop reading them though, or I don't have enough bookmarks and I can't save my place.  Now that will never be a problem, because the NookColor saves your place on everything you start, so I can set something aside for weeks or months and return to the same spot I left off without needing a huge collection of bookmarks.  The NookColor also has a great basic setup for organizing.  Your home page shows a main screen where you can organize books and then you can scroll over to an identical one on the right and another on the left.  Then, the bottom of the screen is where all the rest of the books live and they can be seen by sliding left and right. My NookColor is set up to have books I've started, but temporarily abandoned, on my left screen.  My main screen is the books I am actively reading.  Finally, the right screen is the books I'm really interested in starting soon. The bottom is filled with the rest of my TBR books and I remove anything I've already read from my home screen (but you can access those from your library which is another area on the NookColor, so those books are still with you).  So, now I can read as much as I like, hop around as much as I want and I never worry that the end of the book might not ever be read because I forget.

Highlighting -  Oh my goodness, this is one of my favorite features!  I can highlight as many things as I want in a book and save all the great quotes, the silly parts, the confusing parts or anything I might want to share later.  I love that and I've got in the habit of saving everything, knowing that I'm not damaging the paper or ruining the book for future use.  These highlights don't damage anything, I can add my own notes as well and if I want to clear everything, it's just a finger-press away.  You can also pick the color from the options of green, yellow or blue.  I personally like blue of course.

The NookColor is one of those things I never knew I wanted and as soon as I got it, I felt like I couldn't ever live without one again.  If an inanimate object can be your friend, then the NookColor is definitely mine haha!