It’s not the smartest Not the fastest. But in my book, it’s the latest. Must-have. My own personal electronic mobile bookstore! Just what I need. Another device, one more means to feed my bibliomania, in my case a probable medical condition warranting medication.
Hands-down, hands-on, I was hooked on Nook at first sight. No matter that I had already bought a Kindle for my great niece and nephew (twins) as a combination birthday/Christmas and pre- Bar Mitzvah gift. (don’t ask.) My affinity was for B&N, not Amazon. And the Nook! So sleek, so Apple-iLike, so irresistible with its color touchscreen, its virtual bookshelves, its wifi instant turn-on, its anal jewel case packaging, and its designer leather accessories.
So what I am reading?
God only knows: with the pile-up of books on the nightstand and the signed first editions that stream in monthly via the Odyssey Book Store (South Hadley, MA), it’s hard to keep track. Just pulled signed copies of Louise Erdrich's Shadow Tag and Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City out of the mail this morning. Reading Updike’s Rabbit Run for March book club. Also reading American Salvage, Lark and Termite. On hold with Lacuna (Kingsolver), Let the Great World Spin (Colum McCann) and . . . and . . . and on it goes.
I admit to a sickness of sorts. A gentle malady, harmless enough, collecting the last of the Mohicans: hardback first editions. Those lovely pounds of paper. That smell of ink. The tactile pleasure, turning pages. The solitary joy of reading, words melting into pictures only the imagination can see, an untold delight.
And now! Out with the old, in with the Nook, and the issue of what2read ebookwise. What now in my virtual bookcase, my travel companion and gateway to new spending at Barnes & Noble? Out of ether, choosing guilty pleasures: perhaps it will be Anne Tyler’s dreary and repetitive Noah’s Compass or Stephen King’s juicy potboiler Under the Dome -- too heavy a read in its published first state, but light enough now as a download.
A week without reading? Just opened the floodgates. And so, fellow Wayfarers, what, pray tell, are you reading?
Ah! If I but had time, we'd do dueling ebooks, mano-a-mano: Nook V. Kindle. Perhaps there may yet be an opportunity.... In the meantime. Read Under The Dome. I read it in the two-pound version. It was trash. Can't put it down, don't bother me I'm reading now, 1000 pages of non-stop what happens next. I love Stephen King. He's just so goodly bad.
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