the kindle paperwhite in matcha, and the bath that started it

I dropped a paperback in the bath in january 2024. Not a good paperback. A paperback I had already read twice and annotated aggressively, and it bloated up like a bagel and dried into a soft sculpture, and my sister laughed at me for four minutes straight. That is the origin story of the matcha kindle. The bath won, the paperback lost, and I bought a waterproof e-reader like a person who has learned nothing except one specific lesson.

the honest bit, plus a library card

I paid $159.99 for the 12th generation paperwhite in matcha, which is a soft green the exact color of the ice cream that comes free with your teriyaki combo. I paid the version with lockscreen ads because I told myself I did not care, and then I cared for one afternoon, and then I stopped, and I have not paid the $20 to remove them. I also bought a $24.99 fabric cover in sage, because matcha on matcha felt correct, and I got a library card, which is free, and which is the best deal on this entire blog.

Plainly: amazon refreshed the paperwhite line in october 2024 and this one is current as of now, and the signature edition exists at $199.99 with more storage and wireless charging. Mine is the base one. It is also, per the color, extremely green.

what i actually care about, in order of care

The 7 inch screen is the personality upgrade. 300ppi, glare free, front lit, and about one page-and-a-feeling bigger than the old 6 inch kindle. Text sits there like it is printed on glass that pretends not to be glass. On the bus, in full sun on a patio, at 2am with the warm light at full, it reads like paper with opinions.

The warm light is the feature that changed my nights. You slide it toward amber and the page goes candle-colored, and my brain decided this counts as winding down. I read more in the last two years than the five before it, and I trace most of it to a color temperature slider and a device that cannot show me anything else.

Waterproof means the bath is allowed. IPX8, tested in water over a meter deep, which amazon phrased in the careful language of a company whose lawyers have met my sister. I have read in the bath weekly since. The kindle has been splashed and once, briefly, fully submerged, and it is fine, which is the entire reason it exists in my house.

Battery is measured in weeks and it makes my phone look sick. Amazon says up to 12 weeks at half an hour a day, and my honest experience is a charge every five or six weeks of heavy reading. It charges over usb-c, the same cable as everything else in my life, which after years of the micro usb cable graveyard feels like an apology.

The gripes are real, so here they are. No page turn buttons on this one. Ads on the lockscreen unless you pay extra. It lives in amazon's world: store books, libby books, send-to-kindly emails, and if that sounds like a cage, it is, a comfortable one. I send pdfs and epubs to my own email address like a raccoon operating a lemonade stand, and it works, mostly.

It weighs 211 grams and disappears in one hand. I read standing at the stove with one hand holding it. I read in line at the pharmacy. The screen never turns off on page 40 of an essay like a phone does, which is the quiet, unglamorous miracle of e ink.

the tangent about the library card

The kindle made me get a library card, which sounds backwards, so let me explain it to my mom, who asked me in june why I was excited about "borrowing from the government." The libby app ties your library card to your kindle, you check out a book on your phone at 11pm, and it appears on the e-reader in about four seconds, for free, legally. I have read novels this year that cost me zero dollars, including two I want to shove into everyone's tote bag. The stack of finished books on the homescreen has become the only metric I track that makes me feel taller.

Also, the cover in sage smells faintly like a new pencil case. Nobody asked. I noticed anyway.

the soft landing

I keep meaning to cancel kindle unlimited, the subscription, because I forget it exists for weeks at a time, and yet every time I open the app to do it I

The truest thing: the kindle is the only screen I own that makes the day feel longer, in a good way, like someone quietly handed me an extra hour.

read something tonight, anything

ava