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Avondhu reporter, Ellen Lynch looks at what difference the advancement in technology has made to her passion for reading.

I was reminded, as I sat up in bed in the early hours last week reading on my newly-acquired Kindle, of the nights I read in bed as a child with the help of a flashlight, one ear cocked for any movement from downstairs that would signal my mother's approach.

She caught me a few times, adding dire warnings about my eyesight to her words of reproach. "If she could see me now" I smiled to myself last week. I don't even need a light to read by anymore, the Kindle's technology allows me to read in pitch dark or the brightest light.

I was seven when my mother finally gave in to my pleading and allowed myself and my twin sister to walk to our local library by ourselves to join up. The librarian, a taciturn woman with grey hair controlled in a tightly-wrapped bun, who wore the same lavendar wool suit in all the years I went there, would only allow me, on that first visit, to take two books out. I was mightily disappointed.

One of my two choices was 'The Water Babies' written by the Rev. Charles Kingsley in 1862. I opened it first, started to read about a young chimney sweep swept into a river and was hooked. A whole new world opened up to me, one where the story being told could be matchd by pictures in my head to conjure up a magical experience.

After the first month the librarian's stern demeanour softened. She knew she had a reader on her hands. She let me take out three books at a time, then four and before long I was bringing home six at a time, the maximum number I could carry the half mile or so home. She started discussing my book choices with me. She began keeping aside books she thought I'd enjoy. It was she who recommended 'What Katy Did' and 'What Katy Did Next' - books I loved and remember fondly to this day. Then she introduced me  to the classics, 'Black Beauty', 'Robinson Crusoe', 'Gulliver's Travels' and 'The Swiss Family Robiinson'. I devoured them.

As well as the library, I begged and borrowed books wherever I went. I got into trouble constantly for having my nose buried in a book to the extent that I had to be shouted at to look up, or come to the table for dinner. I was always being told to "put that book down."

My passion for reading has never waned. I still prefer to read than watch television. I have read non-stop on numerous long haul flights, train and bus journeys. I have happily whiled away my time in doctors, dentists and others waiting rooms gleeful at the extra time afforded to read, usually having to be called twice when it's my time to be seen.

A couple of years ago my sister left me in one of my favourite book shops, Barnes and Noble, in New York, warning me that I had only 45 minutes. When she came back I was sitting in a coffee bar beside the store, drinking tea and reading from the first of 10 books I'd bought in my allotted tiime.

My reading tastes have changed greatly over the years. Fiction has given way to real life stories - travel, biographies, adventure. That said, I've also developed eclectic tastes. I've just finished reading about a tribe of yak herders in Siberia whose lifestyle is being threatened as modern day technology encroaches. Another book I read recently was 'Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found', the story of American Cheryl Strayed's three-month, 1,100-mile solo hike along the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), from the Mojave Desert in Nevada, through California and Oregon to Washington State. She was just 26 at the time and a first-time hiker. I felt I was with her every step of the way.

One of my all time favourite books is Jon Krakauer's book 'Into Thin Air' about a 1996 Everest climbing team which ended up suffering the greatest casualties ever at one time on the mountain.

I've become a much faster reader over the years, so much so that I can get through two books a week, more during holidays. I have spent a fortune on books over the years. Still when people mentioned Kindles to me I pooh-poohed them. I was a book purist. I loved the feel of a book in my hand. The smell of print. Then a Ryanair flight curtailed my habit of bringing numerous books on holidays. I couldn't put them in my luggage, it'd cost a fortune and they were a ton weight to carry in my walk-on bag.

I lay squinting on a sun bed this summer in Portugal trying to read while others around me read comfortably on their featherlight Kindles in bright sunlight. Owning one would save me money, I knew, because it's a lot cheaper to download books than buy them in a shop. It wasn't as if I even like to keep books. I give them away as fast as I read them, seeing no point in hoarding or displaying them on a bookshelf. I could download as many at a time as I want, I reasoned. I'd never be without a book again. Still I couldn't bring myself to make the leap.

And then, one recent Sunday, there it was, presented to me. Small and beautiful. My portal to all the books I'd ever want. The best birthday present ever. I quickly got to grips with this tiny technological magic box. I went online, read reviews of books I was interested in, marvelled at the price savings and watched in awe as an entire book downloaded in seconds.

And so it is that the midnight oil is being burned once again and the eyesight ruined. And I am utterly, blissfully happy.

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