For most of my life, I was a 'serial' reader. That is to say, I read a book from start to finish (or ditched it, if it didn't grab me) and began another. This makes a good deal of sense when you read printed books. It's tidier for a start.
When I acquired a Kindle eBook reader, everything changed. I got one because I was unable to read print books any more except with great difficulty, but that is another story.
On the Kindle, I became a 'parallel' reader. At the moment, there are over a hundred books on the tiny device, with capacity for three times that many, at least. I've stopped putting more on because the ones on there will probably see me out. But my library of current books, all hundred+ of them, sits on my pillow. Some I haven't opened yet.
This way of reading changes everything – in my case to something more natural to me. If I wake and want to read for ten minutes, I go down the list, and make my selection. Up it comes on the screen; gloriously, at the exact point where I left off when I stopped on the last occasion. If I have an hour (all too rare!) I might select a weightier tome, figuratively speaking. Again, it is ready for me, at the spot where I stopped before.
I'm blessed with the capacity to remember immediately everything that's gone before in what I've read, even after days – for a limited time at least. So there's no lack of continuity.
Some (few) books on my Kindle are bought; one in fact, Mister Pip, was bought as a surprise gift for me with ten bucks and true generosity of spirit by the kindly @ameeee. Most classics or other works I'm curious about are downloaded free from sites like Gutenberg.org
So, you must understand, I am very far from the cutting edge of what's the newest book to come out – too far in some ways, but there are reasons for that, irrelevant here. I'm practically an antiquarian of the Kindle Reader, which I'm sure will be a total bore to many.
So what are the books I've either completed recently or am still reading – some for the second or nth time?
Completed
Mister Pip
The Turn of the Screw
Gutenberg the Geek
The Hagakure
The Mysterious Stranger
Read in print form, up to 30 years ago and re-reading
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Reminiscences of Queensland
The Tale of Genji
Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays by Bertrand Russell
The Art of War [two versions, here's one]
Adam Bede
Reading for the first time
The McCarroll version of the Tao te Ching
Romola
My Man Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse
From the Five Rivers
Traditions, Superstitions and Folk-lore by Charles Hardwick
Perennials
The Tao te Ching [Gia-fu Feng/Jane English]
There's one more I'm re-reading and absolutely luxuriating in. This is one I'd recommend as a Book Club book that I'm sure most people would love if they've not read it already. But I'm not saying yet....
Denis Wright
What a way to tantalise!
ReplyDeleteWe'll see if anything moves, then shoot it! :)
Delete@deniswright
How tricky transition is for me. I went to a bookshop this morning on direction to buy some children's books. I was told by the sales girl that I was entitled to a free book from a certain shelf. There my eyes lighted on the recognizable cover of an ebook I have "Religion for the Athiest" by de Botton. I have mentioned it on this forum. I resisted but only once out of the shop realized how ridiculous it would have been. I own it on the iPad and, in fact, have referred to it several times. How strange I find it that I had that instinct. Anne Powles
ReplyDeleteI don't really find it strange. For many of us I think it signifies a little (and understandable) lack of trust in the digital technology and the 'cloud'; that the book itself on the shelf is solid and enduring and comforting – and reassuringly personal – to hold in the hand.
DeletePerhaps it's this one feeling that may in the end be the saviour of printed books.
@deniswright
THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER
ReplyDeleteDisclaimer: If you are an enthusiastic blogger be forewarned that if you read this offering of Mark Twain's (as I did after the suggestion above by @deniswright) you may never blog again. Mark Twain just about says it all.
This is a very short philosophical treatise written in that beautiful, simple yet well crafted style with which we are familiar from Mark Twain. He uses the ploy again of talking to young people. As an ex-child psychologist I see a great deal of merit in this. There is nothing more interesting, confronting and thought provoking for the adult than discussing philosophical issues with young teenagers.
It deals with most of the issues that have faced the human race in our interactions over time with one another, the world we live in and our mortality and that we are are continuing to confront in exactly the same way right now.
It does not leave the reader without hope because of the very nature of the young boy who is the main protagonist. This, too, mirrors life as I see it.
This was left unfinished by Mark Twain and was completed by his publisher. I would like to know if perhaps it was unfinished because he could not decide which way to go. I think I would have preferred if it had just petered out, better reflecting the nature of most human attempts to solve problems.
I highly recommend it. I do not know how I have missed it for so many years.
Anne Powles @Qyntara
It's interesting that the older amongst us were brought up reading at least something of Mark Twain's as children's literature - usually Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn but so very few of us are presented with his "adult" works. He was incredibly prolific, and an artist as well as writer, and if you download the illustrated versions [where they are illustrated] his images are really something.
DeleteTwain was unapologetically irreverent and a resolute opponent of dogmatic religion. Of course, coming from America's South, that was the Christianity that shaped America from the days of the Mayflower but morphed into the Southern form compromised and shaped by slavery.
Gutenberg has a vast collection of Twain's work. It cannot possibly appeal to everyone, especially those outraged by his unrelenting atheism. One work, 1601, is a jocular but wildly scatological reconstruction of Elizabethan court humour. The amusing part of the volume is the account of its printing, which prefaces Twain's story.
Don't judge by 1601, which I suspect is the product of a session of drunken revelry: I found others vastly more entertaining and absorbing.