One of our favorite things to do while camped in a beautiful location is to read books. We may fill our days with hiking and photography, but we love returning to the rig, getting a cold drink out of the refrigerator, and reading.
Most of our books come from two sources: Amazon.com and Goodwill. Goodwill (and other thrift stores) often offer a huge selection of books at prices you won’t find online. As an example, I bought the biography of Steve Jobs as a hardback for $1. That same book is $20.95 on Amazon. I’m not frugal, I’m cheap.
While I personally still prefer to read real paper books, the size and weight of books can become an issue in a truck camper. At 656 pages, Steve Jobs measures 6 inches wide, 9 inches tall, 1.9 inches thick, and weighs in at a hefty 2.2 pounds. That’s not exactly light reading!
The obvious alternative to real books would be an eReader or tablet. Amazon Kindles start at just $80 and are incredibly thin and light. The lightest Kindle is just under 5 ounces. That’s over 1.8 pounds lighter than my Steve Jobs book. And the Kindle can hold that book and several thousand other books in memory. It’s like having a small personal library versus just one title.
So am I about to stop buying and reading paper books? Not a chance. There’s something wonderful about holding a real hardback book and turning real paper pages. I may add a Kindle, but real books are staying – at least one or two per truck camping trip.
This week’s Question of the Week is, “On the road, do you read real books, or do you prefer an eReader (Kindle, Nook, Kobo) or tablet (iPad, Google Pixel, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Amazon Fire HD, Huawei MediaPad, etc.)?”
Bonus Question: What’s the best book you have ever read while truck camping? This is a book you would recommend to fellow truck campers, and possibly read again. The Steve Jobs biography is my pick, followed by Elon Musk’s biography. Yes, I love biographies!
Please fill out the form below to answer this Question of the Week.
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