It's Friday evening and we just got back from the library. I got a book by Alexander McCall Smith called 44 Scotland Street that I just can't wait to begin. It's from a daily serial he wrote for his newspaper in Scotland. He got the idea on a trip to San Francisco, when he met Armistead Maupin at a party, and they talked about how Maupin's Tales of the City came about.
But back to the matter at hand. Here's why you and I want an eBook reader:
1. You can carry hundreds of books with you when you travel, and they will weigh no more than 9 ounces (if you have the reader shown here).
2. You know how when you lie on your side in bed, and try to read your book sideways? When you're resting one side of the book on the bed, it's easy. But when you're reading the facing page, you have to balance the book on its edge and grasp the opposite pages with your elbow in the air, so it doesn't shut on itself? All you have to do with your eBook reader is turn it sideways and lean it against a pillow.
3. I've always loved large type, even before reading glasses. When I go to the library and look in the large type section, the pickings are slim. Tonight I counted. There were a total of 43 large type books. You're out of luck if you happen to be in the mood for something other than How to Live With Rheumatoid Arthritis or Danielle Steele. With an eBook reader, you can adjust the type size so it's as large or small as you'd like.
4. If you sleep with another mammal and want to read in bed, you know how he will plead with you to please use the book light, and then after a minute even the book light is too bright? If your eBook reader has a backlit screen, problem solved.
5. This eBook reader looks like a little Etch-a-Sketch if Sony will make it in red. (I manipulated the gray to demonstrate this fact to Sony).
6. Have you moved into a different apartment in the last five or ten years? When we moved, we had 60 boxes of books. It's depressing to me to be surrounded by such mass and volume. Dust and mildew spring out of nowhere. Imagine what your place would look like with 100 extra square feet of space.
7. Don't tell me you're one of those people who just loves to feel the texture of paper in her hands. Then buy a small pad of paper to fondle as you read your eBook!
e-mail from Aggles: I like books w/ real pages that you don’t need batteries to operate. Can you imagine being very, very close to the end of an exciting “who-dunnit” when your batteries give out?
