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My Kindle Made Me A B*tch
I have seen many many many people drawing up pros and cons of e-readers versus paper’n'ink books. I have even done it myself. However, now that I have been using it for a couple of months, I realise that everyone has been missing a crucial point: e-readers make you a completely unreasonable so-and-so.
Say, for instance, you want to read My Cousin Rachel. In the past, you would simply have gone to the library and checked it out. But now, you head for the kindle store only to find it is not available. You huff and puff about this. Of course, you STILL COULD GO TO THE LIBRARY, YOUR KINDLE HAS NOT BROKEN YOUR LEGS. But now that oddly seems like too much effort. So you don’t read it.
Or say, that you think ok, well I think I might read Great Expectations instead. You head to the Kindle store. But you notice you have to pay for it! Even though Jane Austen is free, Dickens wants your cash! (Why is this, by the way?) And even though it is eighty six pence; approximately the cost of the packet of biscuits you have scoffed, you bitterly resent this. Of course, you STILL COULD GO TO THE LIBRARY, etc, etc. But you don’t. So you don’t read it.
And then say, you want to read Moonwalking With Einstein. But this is ten whole pounds for the kindle book! When it is only £8.17 for the paperback! (And this is still a pricey paperback, I think.) And you cannot understand this discrepancy! And you fret about it for days and days and days and regularly check back in desperation because THERE MUST BE SOME MISTAKE! But there isn’t. And eventually you begrudgingly do fork out the tenner, because you actually do really want to read this. And then you wistfully think back to that eighty six pence on Mr Dickens.
You are probable a nicer, less demanding, more patient person than I am. Your kindle has probably enhanced your life without destroying your soul. How do you manage it?
Her Fearful Symmetry
I have just finished reading “Her Fearful Symmetry” which was extraordinary and well worth the read. It is about a pair of semi-spooky and indivisible twins who inherit their Aunt’s flat in London. Upstairs lives a man with serious OCD who can’t leave the flat and spends his days scrubbing the floor and counting in Roman numerals. Downstairs lives the Aunt’s boyfriend. And their Aunt is haunting the flat. One of the twins, Valentina, who at first seems weaker and more timid, wants to break away from Julia, who appears domineering but doesn’t know how to live without Valentina.
What is excellent about this book is the haunting – it all seems perfectly plausible in the way that it is described, and as you know, I am very much a scathing cynic. What is less believable is the steps that Valentina takes to get away from Julia. Most other reviewers seem to compare this unfavourably with the author’s other book “The Time Travellers Wife”. But I actually think it is better. I was ‘meh’ about the “Time Travellers Wife” – I possibly missed the point of it all. And in this book, there were also one or two extraneous plot twists that just made it way more complicated than it needed to be. Apart from that, a big thumbs up.
I am thinking about getting a kindle. Only vaguely though. I think the Husband will probably abandon me at the airport if I don’t stop making him cart the entire contents of Waterstones in a suitcase every time we go abroad. But I am not a huge fan of reading on screen. And also I feel like I will break it almost instantaneously. (See also – iphone). Yes or no, kindle users?
