It’s rather fitting, really. The Kindle allows you to enjoy a book in as free a fashion as you can imagine – look up words you don’t understand, mark a highlight and add it to your notes, tweet a highlight.

You don’t need bookmarks – it always takes you back to where you left off.

What I miss – the ability to flip the pages to a previous chapter if you have forgotten a certain plot turn or character. You can do it on the Kindle but it’s harder, plus I miss the rustling of the pages.

What else did I miss? That I cannot read it when the plane is taking off or landing. This is the best time to be engrossed in a good read so you don’t hear the creaking of aircraft parts or the engine noise.

I tried to argue with a SilkAir stewardess that this was a book and since the 3G and wifi were switched off, “it’s just a book” but to no avail. She insisted, “It’s an electronic device and all electronic devices have to be switched off for landing and take-off.”

I wished airlines were more consistent with what they allow or don’t allow. In October, on a Cathay Pacific flight from Ho Chi Minh City, a Vietnamese woman pulled a blanket over her head and merrily talked away undercover while the plane was taking off. No one stopped her.

I quite liked her attitude – she was exercising her freedom to talk and fly. I want to fight for the same right to read (on a Kindle) and fly.

Some people get away with more than those of us who follow the rules.

Take Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones for example. Here’s someone who certainly didn’t follow the rules and got away with it.

To read his “Life” – the book that’s topping the charts everywhere, I went back to print. It would have been so much easier to buy it on the Kindle but no, I waited till I got to a bookstore, queued up for it and bought a hardcover autographed edition in which he pens, “Believe it or not, I haven’t forgotten any of it.”

I wanted to feel the pages on which his life unfolds. It wouldn’t haven’t felt right on a device. Richards has always been my favourite Stone – he seems to be always giving the finger to life.

Well, in this book, he embraces his life and tells it vividly, funnily and truly.

It took me a while to get used to a book again. Funny – you spend your whole life reading books and then you read one e-book and it changes you,

I found myself wanting to click instead of turn. I missed being able to look up words that I didn’t understand although truth be told, Richards’ the kind of writer whose words are easy to understand – fuck, crap, shit – what’s not to understand. 

I missed the ability to add and tweet highlights initally but as I got into the book, I realised this is how “Life” should be enjoyed. In total selfish solitude.

This is a book to be savored on your own. This is like having Keith Richards in a room with you, him with his guitar and smoking a cigarette, and you get to ask him every single question you’ve ever wanted to ask him.

“So Keith, what was it like growing up?”

“What was it like working with Mick?”

“And, Keef (by now you are on more familiar terms and can call him by his nickname) what was it like writing ‘As Tears Go By‘ – which is such a non-Stones song but made Marianne Faithfull a star?”

I am loving Life as it should be loved and lived by Keith Richards.

After this, I am getting “Just Kids” by Patti Smith who’s just won the 2010 National Book Award for her memoir. It will also have to be a book because as Patti says, “Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don’t abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.”

Wild Horses wouldn’t keep me away, Patti. 

Featured image credit (Book page): Ockra/iStock