Do you remember that there was once a time when you didn't have a mobile phone, and no one else you knew did?
So if you wanted to get in touch, you'd have to (i) remember their phone number and (ii) call their house to see if they were in? Or alternatively – and even more outlandishly – you'd have to (i) remember where they live and (ii) drop by to see if they were in.
How on earth did we get by wasting so much time? Walk round to someone's house! The very idea of it.
It's very odd how mobile phones, laptops, social media, iPods etc etc have all insinuated their way into our lives subtly and irreplaceably, to the point where we take them completely for granted.
They start appearing and you think: "That's ridiculous – I never needed [whatever the gadget does] before. Why would I need that now?" Before you know it, you get panicky if you can't check Facebook while you're on the toilet. The medium is the message, innit?
So I must report unto you – my readers – then, that I am now the owner of an Amazon Kindle (thanks to all the Sicilies for my Father's Day present!) And having been sceptical about them before, experience suggests that I should approach this new bit of technology in my life with the innocent openness to having one's mind changed of a new boy turning up for his first day at Pyongyang Central Penitentiary College of FE.
Having lugged a hardback copy of "Against the Day" (1,085 pages) around with me for the months it took me to read (TWICE), I am already feeling the benefit in terms of improved posture.
However, the Kindle is affecting my habits in other ways. It is changing what I read – for the simple reason that there are hundreds of great books out there (many of them here) that are FREE.
Now, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't pick up a second-hand copy of Herodotus' "The Histories" for any price. On the one hand, it would take up too many of the sparse cubic feet in my tiny house. On the other, if it was shit, I would feel obliged to read it to the end because I'd paid for it.
I know what you're thinking. No, not "oh god, he's talking about Greeks again – I thought this was going to a funny one or an angry one". What you are thinking is Herodotus' work would probably not have survived the last 2,600 years and become a central part of the Western literary canon if it had been shit.
Well, believe me – despite the lure of "The Histories" being effectively the novelisation of 300, I would not have stuck with old Herodotus past that endless description of "how big various things in Egypt are" in the second book if it hadn't been free. And I am probably a more enlightened person for doing so. My bag is certainly enlightened. BOOM BOOM.
It still hurts me mentally to think that I gave up reading "On the Road" TWICE because it was so awful after paying full price for a brand new copy. And that was about 17 years ago.
But now, I can pick up books by a whole host of authors and give up on them if they're a load of old crap like Kerouac, because they didn't cost me a penny! In your face, economics of publishing! And in your face, self-imposed obsessive-compulsive rules of behaviour!
So, if you like sci-fi and you haven't read HG Wells or Jules Verne – stop paying money for new books and read the foundations of the freaking genre for nothing. If you like horror, Arthur Machen and HP Lovecraft. If you like crime, Conan Doyle. And you needn't spend a penny. Well, if you already have an e-reader that is.
Plus, it's better than the library, because (i) you don't have to remember to take anything back, (ii) it's likely to exist for more than a couple of years to come, and (iii) best of all - it's not full of smelly vagrants and weirdos!
I have a thing about Greeks... the old ones, not the modern bankrupt ones, or the more stereo-typed back passage loving ones. Many years ago when I was at school I had a history teacher whom I had mixed feelings on. On the one hand he was a witty and brilliant man. On the other hand life had worn him down and he was merely going through the motions.
ReplyDeleteAs an adjunct to the "do you remember when..." theme of your post this was a time when basic texts were lacking in education. In my school there was only one or two modern and great texts. There rest of the text books then graduated down to more ancient and basic tomes.
I was intelligent but I had not really revealed myself, to myself even, low self exteem kept me mucking about instead of applying myself... indeed it was all my own fault. Said history teacher was only drawn to brilliance or humour and I had not developed myself significantly in either direction.... I did not discover the greeks until after university through fear that they were all over my head.
I have a special thing for Herodotus and Xenophon... I mean it would be better if they wrote in a more Raymond Chandler stylee... but you know, if you stick with it and read between the lines and check some commentaries, there is something to be had...
Kindles... I looked into one and decided against. Well I decided to wait for the "colour" Kindle, I like everything about Kindles except I want my morning "E-paper" with photos and the like. Colour Kindle is not forthcoming.
I also assumed that there would be no "free" books on Kindle but this has been severely disavowed by the fact that, independent of this blog post, I accessed my Kindle app yesterday and found many, many free classics (like you I would not have taken a chance on Defoe's "A Journal of the Plague Year" or Wallis's "The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians")... It was for this reason, mixed with another, that I actually dreamt (I know, sad) of a Kindle last night... because reading on an LCD Android phone screen makes my eyes bleed and it is something that I am getting into.
So maybe it is time to reassess... I would be interested to hear your thoughts on "liquid ink" and whether the 3G version is required... I also like the look of the DX model, available for import from US only, as it has a bigger screen. Finally have you tried browsing on it?
Take it easy.
The liquid ink is really good - me and Elvira both love it. Also, if you buy a cover for it (in a range of stylish leatherette colours), there's a little built in front light that helps with reading in dark environments. It is infinitely better than anything backlit in terms of eye strain. The battery life is phenomenal, btw. I think I've charged it twice since I've had it.
ReplyDeleteI did download the Kindle app from the Android store, and while that seems happy to promote free content, I found the main Kindle store to be a lot harder to track stuff down in. Plus, the screen is so small on my HTC Desire that it's practically unuseable. And then there's the lighting, which is horrible.
I don't have the 3G version, because I can't imagine circumstances in which I would need to download a book with such urgency that I could not wait to get in range of a WiFi network. Elvira gets a newspaper on hers - I suppose if you were using the Kindle for periodicals and whatnot, then 3G might be useful, but I'm not at that stage yet!
Yeah, screen size makes a difference I suppose. I would like a bigger screen, but (I suspect) purely in order to make the number of screens approximate more closely to the number of pages in a book! For myself, I cannot get my head round the navigation by "location" and bookmarks - I find it extremely clumsy and user-unfriendly.
I have tried accessing other sites on it. Oddly enough, Amazon's own Kindle store is the only one I have found that is remotely well-rendered. Is it a substitute for an iPad? No way. But then I don't want an iPad.
Xenophon you say? His name will go on the list! Those crazy Greeks and their pre-Judaeo-Christian ideas...