Greg having given me permission to post, just in case he’s not able to find web access, it looks like the reading public will have an opportunity to read the Goose Master and Papa Goose at the same time. (Please do NOT comment on the alternative meanings of Goose Master) We 60 plus types are sometimes taken aback by the modern technological age. You have to remember that I was a practicing physician and a father before the first computers became available to the general public. I had a pager, but all it did was alert me to the need to call my answering service to find out what was up. I had all the pay phones in Pasadena, Anchorage and Ukiah memorized. Cell phones, coffee makers you can set in advance, TV recorders you can set up to record every program in which you have any interest for the next month, and a multitude of other wonders just did not exist except in science fiction.
People who know me well will agree that one of my major characteristics is that I am a fanatic reader. I have been known to retreat from family gatherings to get a twenty minute reading fix, and to take paperbacks to the opera, ball games, etc. (OK, I’m getting to the point)
Now I have the discovered the greatest thing since the credit card. In two weeks I will be at a medical meeting for continuing education, and then taking a ten day vacation trip to attend a family wedding. Taking enough books for that long a trip would mean adding a great deal of weight to my luggage, EXCEPT I have discovered e-books. I have FIVE novels in my PDA as we speak, and room for several more. Does it matter that they are not all good novels? No, some were free and I expect them to be pretty bad. But, free and fitting into my PDA is good. One of them is Vanity Fair. I haven’t read that since high school, but I’ll be Becky Sharp is still living up to her name.
I’m a pig in heaven, wallowing in the printed word, awash in prose. Neat! Cool!
How many public phones are there in Ukiah anyway?
Dear Papa Goose: As an aspiring blogger/technology/computer struggler myself, I can symphathize/emphathize. As a voracious reader, enjoy very much your most readable contributions. Much fun to be had
Will follow your suggestions in terms of books.
I explained this advantage of e-books at least a year ago. Jeez.
One of my other daily reads recently pointed out this site which has many books for download for free, and they appear to be largely classics, so, even though free, they should still be quality stuff. It’s got Kim, which is one of my favourite books, so it can’t be all bad.
Another website with classic books (in that their copyright has expired) is <a href="http://www.gutenberg.net/">Project Gutenberg. You can download those books to your PDA as well.
Beeing a bookoholic suffering the same problems with travelling, myself, I tried e-books too, but my addiction seems to be strongly coupled to the actual turning of paper pages. And my left eye tears when I read too long from a PDA :( Admittedly, it’s a lot easier to get a way with reading from a PDA during a lecture than from a book, though.
You and Greg are so much alike.
I could NEVER read a book off a pda. There is something about the aesthetic and tactical experience of reading a book that I just couldn’t get from a pda. The feeling of the paper in your hands, that slight musty smell, the sound of the pages turning, the bility to dog ear a page for easy reference and make notes in the margins. Underline favorite passages. Etc.
That and I just don’t see to absorb the words as well from a screen. If you’ve ever tried to proofread something from your computer screen instead of printing it out, you’ll know what I mean.
You can have the convenience of e-books. I, instead, will “waste” my time poking around Green Apple books, losing myself in the stacks. I’ll test my strength and question my addiction everytime i move, lugging hundreds of pounds of books from location to location. And I’ll judge every new person i meet by their bookshelf( or lack thereof) spending a good mount of time nosing through their collection and flipping through novels, raising my eyebrows when i notice that half of the spines are uncreased.