Julia Larson is a freelance copywriter and copyeditor. When she’s not on a quadrilateral device, she’s on her yoga mat, a hike, or a cooking spree.

If you’re a book club enthusiast, then an ereader is (or has already proved to be) your new best friend. From instant access to your new novel, an ereader enhances your book club experience from start to finish. Although I’ve only recently become a book club attendee, I’ve found that my Kindle Paperwhite is an invaluable asset.

Here are five reasons an ereader is your best book club companion:

1. Start reading almost instantly.

No need to wait for a book to arrive in the mail or travel to your library’s shelves. You can easily download your ebook as soon as that month’s book is announced. And you’ll be extra thrilled when the book you want is downloadable for free from your library’s ebook collection.

Pro tip: If you know the lineup of your club’s reading, check out your library’s ebook collection early. That way you can put holds on any popular titles.

2. Highlight sections you want to discuss.

Sure, you can highlight in a traditional book, but with an ereader, your highlights are aggregated for easy access. Never again will you flip through your book with frustration, searching for that one page…

And don’t forget to take notes on those highlighted sections to share with your reading buddies!

3. Take copious notes.

An ereader’s ability to catalogue your notes is a huge boon to your reading experience—and even your vocabulary. Instead of flipping through all your pages or carrying along a notebook, you can seamlessly integrate your note-taking with your reading. For detailed instructions on how to highlight and take notes with a Kindle Touch, view this YouTube.

Later on, when you’re in your book club’s discussion, you can easily recall what excerpts & questions you want to bring up. (This is also awesome for the discussion leader of the group.)

4. Easily look up passages.

While a book club that relies on page numbers could lead to some frustration, the easy keyword lookup on an eReader counteracts it. If someone gives you a word or two that appears in the section, you can quickly see all the places it occurs in your novel. Additionally, there are certain ebooks (like The Light Between Oceans) that sync the traditional book’s pages with the ebook version.

For illuminated/backlit ereaders:

5. Comfortably read indoors & outdoors.

During my book club, I’m sometimes in the shade and sometimes in direct sunlight. Either way I can simply adjust the brightness on my Paperwhite. Of course the lighting is a major advantage throughout your ereading, from the moment you download your ebook to your club’s meeting.

Comment with your input!

Are you an avid ebook reader in a book club? What other advantages have you noticed with your ereader?

Only six weeks after awaking my Kindle Paperwhite from its shipping siesta, I simply can’t see myself ever going back to only paper-paged books. My first ereader has transported me to the ethereal land of e-ink, where I read quickly, quietly, and comfortably.

This comes as a terrific surprise to me. I grew up loving the scent of new paper and ink. I recall sticking my face between the pages of a new book in the elementary school library, drawing in a huge sniffff, trading my book for my friend’s, then both repeating the process. As my school days progressed, I still loved books, but I grew to resent a Norton Anthology’s toll on my wrist, a stubborn shadow on a page, a long passage in size 8 font.

So now I have a Kindle Paperwhite. Have you considered getting one? Before you do, consider my experience thus far—the good, the bad, the Kindle.

+ The Pluses:

• Brightness anxiety, begone! With 25 possible brightness levels (0 to 24), your eyes can be comfortable in any setting. Especially as someone who keeps their laptop screens quite dark, I was nervous that the Kindle would be too bright—but it’s not. Glare is also minimal on the matte screen.

• Incredibly light and easy to handle, the Paperwhite is certainly no paperweight (though I’ve witnessed “Paperwhite” misheard as “paperweight”), which makes me more apt to tackle a heavy book (War and Peace is downloaded and intended to be read).

• Dictionary look-up is the best thing ever. Gone are the days when I write down a list of words from Sense & Sensibility, then fail to ever go look them up. An obscure bird in The Hound of the Baskervilles? No problem. A word prefixed with in- or ex- that’s been forgotten? Simply hold the tip of your finger on it. Grazier? Sedge? Tor? It’s easy to check what a word means—or highlight it to go back and look later.

• Reading is uninterrupted, despite having “special offers” (ads that appear on the locked screen and at the bottom of the home screen). Some ads are even useful to me (a few $ of Amazon music downloads, anyone?). I haven’t seen a garish one yet, thanks to no colorful e-ink. Opting to get special offers was $20 well-saved.

• Use it anywhere. My favorites: the gym (no more fighting to keep a book propped up and opened on an elliptical or bike); the waiting room (car repair, doctor’s office); before falling asleep (no light to reach over and turn off).

• Intuitive controls make reading seamless and speedy. Simple tapping or swiping motions (that I’m not totally used to yet) transition from screen to screen. Akin to iPhone controls, pushing apart or pulling together the tips of two fingers on the screen triggers zooming or font size adjustment.

•  Battery lasts quite a long time. I like to switch the Paperwhite to “airplane mode” to save battery, too, so I can go at least a couple weeks without charging. However, airplane mode also means I miss out on updates to special offers, so I’d be wise to turn on the wi-fi more often!

• Reading progress is helpful for pacing myself by the time or percentage left in a chapter or book.

- The Minuses:

• Touchscreen features aren’t as accurate as I expected. This is my central complaint. There’s a weird glitch where the font size option occasionally pops up when I tap the screen with a single finger (this occurs about once every three hours of reading). Maybe I’m activating font size adjustment accidentally because I’m not an adept enough ereader user (yet). Either way, I get duly frustrated when my attempt to use dictionary look-up ends up turning a page (this occurs about once an hour).

• Finding a cover or case can be agonizing. Choosing between cheap unknown brands and price known ones took a fair amount of research. Since the cheaper brands’ claims of “fits Kindle Touch and Kindle Paperwhite” couldn’t be tested via internet, I opted to request Amazon’s very own Kindle case. Currently my Kindle’s abode is a Billabong knit hat that already had a drawstring. Christmastime brings promises of an Amazon-made case, which I’m nervous won’t be agile enough or won’t prop well on a workout machine.

Please comment:

I would—and have—recommended the Kindle Paperwhite to everyone. Ebooks are a delight, and this fresh ereader is a delightful platform. What’s next for the ereader? Colorful e-ink? Closer integration with social media? Eye-tracking technology for a touch-free swipe to the next page? Share your thoughts, contribute a comment!

P. S. Finding both “nook” and “(re)kindle” a handful of times apiece in Wuthering Heights, the first book read on my Kindle, was fun.