On eBooks

Responding to Friday's post about The Blue Cabin going digital, our friend Laura, a lover of books – by which I mean books – had this to say (with a smiley face of course):

"Don't go digital, books are supposed to have pages & not batteries & they are supposed to dry out after you've dropped them in the bath, not implode, and they are supposed to gather dust until you rediscover them 10 years later and you're supposed to be able to leave them on park benches and wonder about who will pick them up. They are also meant to keep you healthy, lugging large weights around is a great aerobic workout. Do you want to play a part in the death of libraries? Where's your sense of social responsibility!!"

I pointed out that the jury was still out for me but that Lynn was in the market for an eBook device because she is a voracious reader and, being island-bound much of the time, doesn't get to the bookshops often enough to feed her habit. To this, Laura offered Amazon:

"It does great reviews & after a few purchases suggests BOOKS (with real pages) that you may enjoy.  It has, however, to my great disappointment, strayed into Kindle territory (I wonder if it is so named cos it's subliminally encouraging everyone to burn their real books; maybe they could have been less subtle and called it Bonfire or Conflagration or something more obvious)."

I responded that our internet connection on the island is so patchy, searching sites like Amazon is an exercise in frustration – to post to this blog, for example, I do the writing and prepare the image off-line, then access my Blogger account and hope for the best (many a time the laptop has almost ended up, to borrow a phrase from our Sicilian friends, 'feeding the fishes') – and so far I haven't heard back from Laura. She'll have an answer though – she usually does.

One thing's for sure: she's not alone!