Thoughts from a rainy Friday afternoon, listening to the birds outside my studio taking a (rather vocal) break between rainstorms:

I haven’t had this much delight in unbridled intellectual exploration since my undergrad years. I’m just perusing the classics, letting the source texts speak to me directly, and avoiding summarizations. It’s hard work (although I suppose if I wanted to go even deeper I could always learn Latin, thereby removing the translator (and their possible biases or inaccuracies) sitting between me and the original work), but very rewarding. Currently I’m reading Epictetus’ works on Stoicism, and comparing two different translations (and their introductions to the work), as I dive more deeply into the concept of living a peaceful and purposeful life in a world in flux where I have little control over the most disruptive events. (And if you’re interested in the same thing, I recommend starting with How to Be Free translated and introduced by A.A. Long, which includes Epictetus’ Encheiridion guide to Stoicism and selections from his Discourses.)

This boundless literary exploration is what the Kindle was meant for, and probably part of the vision that Bezos had in mind when he first backed the project in 2004. Reading one book leads to discovering another (either in my library or via the in-device Kindle Store), flipping between volumes takes only a few taps, and a thousand volumes fit in my pocket. No distractions, no social media, no ads, just pure text conveying the author’s words. While smartphones have evolved into devices with increasingly concerning side effects, the humble Kindle remains exactly what it started as… a library that fits in your hand, and is available anytime, anywhere. Nothing more and nothing less.

A feast for the soul.

While I love paper books as well (and with their infinitely better resolution and readability, not to mention those glorious printed covers), I couldn’t imagine following this same philosophical journey as quickly or as easily without my Kindle (or another great e-reader, such as Rakuten’s Kobo Clara Color).

An interesting fact from the history of e-books: Martin Eberhard, the co-founder of NuvoMedia, makers of 1998’s Rocket eBook (widely considered the first modern e-reader) approached Bezos for early funding but turned down Bezos’ requirement that their reader be exclusive to Amazon. Eberhard went on to co-found Tesla in 2003.

Perhaps there’s something to be learned from Eberhard’s trajectory, since both the Rocket eBook and Tesla succeeded not by doing everything, but by doing one thing exceptionally well. In my own work, I’ve noticed how much harder it’s become to sustain deep focus. The Kindle represents something we’re losing: tools designed to enable rather than extract, to focus rather than interrupt, to create space for the reader to commune with the author and their ideas. Epictetus taught that tranquility comes from focusing on what’s within our control. In a world increasingly designed to fragment our attention, single-purpose devices that refuse to control us back aren’t a limitation. They’re a feature.