Recently, I invested in something new, and I think it is helping me revive a pleasant pastime.
Voila! ...
Yes, I have invested in an e-reader. The one you are looking at is the Kobo reader, which I ordered from the Borders.com website.
There are many other e-readers. Barnes & Noble has the Nook. Amazon has the Kindle. There is a Sony reader. I could go on.
I selected the Kobo because it is relatively inexpensive, a charge lasts a long time, it can hold tons of books, it's easy to hold and easy to use. Even for an old coot like me. It also uses open-source Epub files and PDF files, unlike Amazon's Kindle, which is probably the best-known e-reader. It's also available in Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand.
How did I first hear about it? From Twitter. Bob McKenzie is a well-known hockey analyst on Canada's TSN network, and I subscribe to his Twitter feed. While in North Carolina on vacation this summer, he was twitting about his Kobo and how happy he is that he bought it. He was reading the Stieg Larsson books this summer, among other things.
That got me to looking at the Kobo website, where I saw I could order an e-reader from Borders.com.
The e-reader, which weighs well under a pound, can hold about a thousand books in its silicon memory and another thousand or so if you connect an SD memory card (which are cheap nowadays). Just after I bought mine (naturally!), Kobo released a updated version that can do more things and do them faster. I'm happy with mine, though.
My e-reader has about a dozen books I have downloaded plus a hundred classics that were preloaded. Many, many books are available for free--all you have to do is download them and transfer them from your computer to the e-reader. Check out feedbooks.com and manybooks.net--all their stuff is available for free.
My problem with reading has always been time. I tend to keep pretty busy and have a lot of things I like to do. My job, both during the day and at night. Some TV sports. Watching stuff on TV with my wife. Surfing the web. Taking and editing pictures. Writing letters and blog posts. Oh, it's a busy life! Multitasking, anyone?
All that has crowded reading for pleasure out of my life for quite a while. Occasionally I get excited about a book and spend much of my spare time with it. I have been reading texts I download from Project Gutenberg, using an eText reader. When I am at the computer screen, I can read the book. But I don't want to be staring at a computer screen all the time. I also want to read when I'm elsewhere, doing other things.
For instance, I took my wife to see the doctor for a checkup late last week. She was gone for about an hour. How did I spend all that time in the waiting room? You guessed it! I also want to have some maintenance done on my little car (which just hit 189K). How will I spend my time while the car is on the hoist? Old magazines or something I really would like to read?
(Actually, I picked up a copy of Playboy and paged through that while getting a haircut recently. They had some really good articles in there. Really!)
Part of the reason is space. I have been shying away from buying new books lately because I have too many books at home that I haven't gotten around to reading. Magazines, too. Collectively, they take up space. I realize that I really need to winnow the inventory down. Someday.
But the e-reader is light and easy to pack along. I bought a little neoprene sleeve for it, so it can safely hit the road with me--along with tons of books. All of it weighing less than a pound and taking less space than a trade paperback.
What am I reading? Not the popular bookstore stuff. Long ago, I developed an affection for classic literature, and there are so many classics I'd like to read. I love Dickens, and I've never read "A Tale of Two Cities." So that's what I'm reading now--I'm about halfway through it.
Also, at times during my eText days, I was plowing through "Lorna Doone." I got bogged down about two-thirds of the way through, but I'm making headway on it again. (At least I was until I got into "Two Cities.") Several other books, too. I read the last of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales ("The Prairie") while in college. Now I plan to start with "The Deerslayer," the first book (chronologically) in the series.
The thing I enjoy most about reading, of course, is that it takes me away from the here and now, whisking me away to another time, another place. The classic writers have the human condition down pat--the same human frailties all around us today existed back then, too, as well as the virtues. I made sure to download Henry Fielding's "Tom Jones" and plan to re-read that. A very long book that rewards the reader with many wry observations about life and people. A excellent read. There are so many more, I know. I wish I had more time to read.
Time. That reminds me that I also went low-tech this year.
For years, I have worn complex wristwatches. Most were digital models made by Timex, which had timers and stopwatches and alarms. And they also stored data. Notes. Phone numbers. Reminders. A calendar. Data was transferred from the computer to the watch via a cable or even a flashing screen.
But while the watches were complex and a bit costly, they attached on my wrist with cheap plastic bands. After a year or so, the cheap plastic band would break, and I would have to buy a replacement. Before long, the battery needed replacing, too. The replacement batteries never seemed to last that long.
The data watches were a product of the 1990s: before cell phones were popular and smartphones evolved. About two years ago, it occurred to me that my phone already stores all the info that was on my data watch. So what's the point of having one?
When it became battery time again, I decided to go in an entirely different direction. Low tech. No new data watch. Not even a digital.
Yes, I went analog ...
I decided to get a simpler watch that only has to tell me the time. That's the kind of stuff watches do best. I remembered many times during winter, when I was driving somewhere in the dark and I wanted to check the time. There is a button to light the digital data watch's face, but the digits were hard to make out, especially in a moving vehicle. And in order to activate the light, I needed to reach over and press the button with my other hand. While driving.
I finally selected a watch that has luminescent hands and a dot on the second hand, so I can read it when it's totally dark. With one hand. It's got a dark green face and white hands; with that contrast I can read it in low light conditions. With one hand. When I use my other hand to press the light button, the watch has a light green face with dark hands.
Of course, the watch operates with a quartz crystal and is shock-resistant. I may have wanted to go retro, but not so retro that I was always checking its accuracy and turning the hands a few minutes ahead or behind as needed. Two major things I will have to do each year: switching to and from daylight time. That isn't done automatically any more. But I can handle that. In spring, I turn the hands ahead an hour. In fall, I pull out the stem--and let the watch sit frozen in time for an hour. Before long, I'm back on time.
I got the new watch early this year, and I really like it. There's just one thing I don't care about--it's got a leatherish strap (real leather? who knows?) that you have to open and close when you take the watch off, like when you wash your hands or shower. Maybe an expansion band would make life a tiny bit easier.
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