Used before but re-edited Conversation is part my new series of feet photographs.We are lucky to live in an age of electronic gadgets, where technical progress so often to takes us by surprise. Some time ago I questioned the value of Ebooks. Barrett Bonden has since lent me his Sony Reader on which to read his as yet unpublished novel. I quickly became a convert. And now I have my own Ebook. Mine is the Amazon Kindle. I can see that it has some disadvantages when compared with the Sony Reader as well as some advantages. While I can buy books in a matter of moments with Kindle's wi-fi facility and subscribe to and receive various magazines and newspapers, I cannot get hold of books in French. Amazon France, does not, it seems, yet have Kindle books available in French. Meanwhile the advantages of having an Ebook of whatever make, are immediately apparent. Within a few minutes of owning the device I had acquired the complete works of Shakespeare, the complete works of Charles Dickens and the complete works of Tolstoy, the King James Bible and the option to sample and buy if I choose a number of other books. The total bill is about £8.00. new books are naturally more expensive, but less so than new books even when the cover price has been discounted by Amazon. Two excellent dictionaries come free with the Kindle. No worry as yet about storage space. The latest version of Kindle has capacity for around 3,500 books. Shelf space at home meanwhile becomes free because I am able to discard a number of old and dusty classics in worn bindings and with yellowing pages, for which I now have no use.
Dave Jones who is a builder and decorator gave me earlier this year a packet of parsnip seeds. He apparently has a contest every year with a friend to see who can grow the longest parsnip. And these were left over from his planting. I am not interested in such challenges, but parsnips are now a topic of conversation when ever we meet. Today he tells me of a man who has grown a parsnip 9ft long in a drainpipe.
3 comments:
Your happiness with your new electronic acquisition has inspired a post dedicated to you and other such owners - enjoy!
http://www.marja-leena-rathje.info/archives/ebook_readers.php
Interesting to read your comments on
e books. As several of my books are about to have e book editions I can soon justify
this purchase as a tax deduction as well as a new tool. I'm thinking about an I Pad, though.
Its a bit bigger, but I can also draw and paint directly on the screen with a special stylus and a very inexpensive app, thus making it a sketch book as well.
And, it seems, with no sense of betraying the Caxtonian method. Good heavens, was I the one who took you up into a high place and said...? Fill in the dots. A thought occurs. You have more books than anyone I know. Does the total exceed 3500 titles? - probably not because that's a mighty lot of shelf-space. But it's a sobering thought that you could double your library without any problems involving winnowing or Rawlplugs. And the several free, virtually infinite downloadable archives (including the huge one devoted to French literature) which I have blogged about mean you could continue reading new stuff, without cost, until the Crack of Doom.
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