I found the following article and it is definitely tongue in cheek but it so reminded me of my wife who also refuses to use and E-reader like Kindle even though my son and daughter each have one. I have used my daughter's to listen to "Ringworld"by Larry Niven which is one of my favorite Science Fiction Books from about 1970. I discovered that you can buy audiobooks and play them through Kindle and listen to them when you are driving long distances which can be fun if you happen to be driving alone or if everyone else in the car doesn't mind you either playing your Kindle through the cars sound system. (Or you could just put earphones on I guess) if they mind. anyway, this lady sounds like my wife which is great.
Katy Guest: I've read the future, and it doesn't work (or smell nice)
I took my new ebook reader on holiday recently. Now there's a
sentence I never expected to write. According to all the statistics,
something like 99 per cent of all known life now owns a Kindle, and only
dinosaurs, idiots and perverts still buy paper books. But I'm not the
only one: two-thirds of Mslexia readers, according to their new survey,
are "book fetishists". I don't file my personal library according to the
Dewey Decimal System, as 1 per cent of their respondents do, but I do
organise books alphabetically and I like the way they smell. But as this
paper's literary editor, I ought to try anything once (except morris
dancing, incest and magic realism), so I downloaded some books.
I make that sound so simple. What I really did was: took my ereader
out of its box... Figured out that its battery was dead... Realised I
had lost its lead... Ordered a new lead from the internet... Discovered
too late that the delivery needed to be signed for, so it was taken back
to the sorting office... Went to a shop and bought another lead ...
Charged the ereader ... Found that most of the new books I need to read
for my job are not available as ebooks... Tried four online bookshops
before finding one that sold the right format... Chose some books...
Persuaded a young colleague to help me download them... Packed my
ereader, expectantly.
I stepped onto the plane with hand luggage
only, and settled down to read my novel. Then the cabin crew told me to
switch off my in-flight reading: no electronic devices are allowed
during take-off and landing. My holiday companion sat beside me, smugly
reading his paperback. By the time we got to the pool (me hovering
protectively over my costly electronic device), he had finished his
George RR Martin, and I had barely started my Hilary Mantel. With my
modern new gadget, I was left behind.
Three cheers, then, for
Derek Addyman, a secondhand bookseller in Hay, who has called for a ban
on ereaders at this week's literary festival. "Kindles have no place at
this festival which is supposed to be a celebration of the written word –
and books," he says. "Books are sociable and people stop and talk to
each other about them. Kindles are just a phase and they won't last."
You know why? They're all reading dodgy "erotica" between those
anonymous plastic covers, apparently. So who are the perverts, now?
I
got back from holiday with no lovely new books to show for the week,
meaning that I was powerless to prevent my holiday companion slotting
his new purchases on to the bookshelves then reorganising all our titles
according to genre. To genre! Melvil Dewey and I could weep. Next time I
go on holiday, I'm taking only big, fat, delicious papery hardbacks,
and then I'm going to bring them home and arrange them by author and
title. I may be mistaken for a dinosaur, an idiot and a pervert, but
I'll have read the latest books, filed them properly and be able to
prove that I am not secretly reading soft porn.
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