Another Kindle Post

Almost a year in, and 40 books down, one underway and others lined up.

Mojo magic!

One thing I have come to love about this electronic book device is the ease with which I can browse the bookstore. Admittedly, it's only one bookstore -- Amazon -- but there's plenty to tantalize. If I read a review, or hear a friend mention a book, or see one pop up as a recommendation and I think I'm interested, I download the sample. Especially now that the college bookstore has become even less about books than before, I appreciate sampling.

On the screen today? A sample from The Story of Charlotte's Web, a story whose outlines I already know, but about the process of a writer whose work never grows tiresome.

Why knows? Maybe if I get some Christmas gift certificates at my Kindle store, I shall be reading the whole thing in just a few weeks. Wouldn't that be lovely?

What if money were no object?

"What would you do?" asks Alan Watts.

I would give my most prized and sentimental possessions to my family and most of the rest of my possessions to those who could use or want them.

I would buy a little plot of land near my family, in woods, near mountains and water. On it, I would build a tiny house with an adjoining tiny studio just like this one.

I would use a fast computer with all the right photography and publishing programs. I would use more flexible equipment, including different cameras for different purposes. I would share my tiny house with a cat or cats to keep me company. I would use my library card at a good library with Kindle books. I would live near a college campus where I could attend lectures and plays, concerts and classes. I would travel to places I already love and love the new ones I would visit. I would wear comfortable clothes all the time, and every night at home I would float in a big bathtub under stars.

I would read, and walk, and write, and complete my poetry MFA and take photography classes and workshops, and make pictures, and compose and construct handmade books.

I would spend time with people I love and with people who create things because they must.

I would drink tea and make scones.

I would wake without fear and fall asleep without anxiety.

And I would be happy.

Kindle: Pro and Con

I thank the Kindle inventor and my family for their Christmas gift. In one month, I've regained my reading pace, completing seven books (The Round House, Epitaph for a Peach, Absurdistan, The Sense of an Ending, Salvage the Bones, Home, and Life Everlasting: The Animal Way of Death. This afternoon, I started Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-distance Swimmer, and moments ago I downloaded A Visit from the Goon Squad, having learned it's wise to have a book loaded before finishing one. The best thing about my Kindle? Ease of reading: I can adjust the text size and brightness to compensate for my still-out-of-balance reading prescription.

I love reading this way, but . . . .

I miss the smell and feel of paper, the weight of a book, the beauty of the dust jacket and cloth cover, and illustrations large enough to see. I had to squint to see the line drawings of stink bugs and other creatures in Life Everlasting, an irritation that actually interfered with my reading pleasure. And I miss using my colored flags to mark pages and passages to return to when further along in the book. Only today did I figure out how to mark a whole passage and not just a word and then read all the marked passages. I can't, however, flip around the way I used to. And I'm a dedicated book flipper. For me, reading can be a physical activity.

Nevertheless, I've got my reading mojo working, and that makes me a happy woman.

Hello, Old Friend

About three years ago, I slowly lost reading as one of my most pleasurable pastimes. Not for lack of trying, but for lack of vision. Now two surgeries later and Kindle-equipped, I have rediscovered what I have long missed.

Ten days ago I began with Louise Erdrich's deeply affecting The Round House; moved on to Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones which a friend rightly called "raw"; slipped into a bit of frippery with Julia Stuart's The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise; and then read the insightful and informative memoir Epitaph for a Peach by David Mas Masomoto. Waiting for me now on my re-charged reader is Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending.

Rain, a comfortable couch, shelves of art and books, my cat at my side, and literature: hello, old friend. How long you've been gone.