Books - Digitalized
I remarked in my last post that I’ve been reading eBooks. I decided to reuse this post that I made to another blog after reading my first eBook. Sorry for recycling, but I think it makes some good points and wanted to share it with a wider audience.
Last night I finished reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, by Mark Twain. A couple of interesting things related to this: 1) It’s the first eBook I’ve read on a portable device (I read a PDF book on my PC once). 2) It’s perhaps the first “school” type novel I’ve read since finishing college (7 years ago).
First, the book itself. This book actually surprised me. I think I was expecting something silly about a man trying to fit in where he doesn’t belong. Instead I got a fabtastic story that was a criticism of many institutions including capitalism, caste systems, slavery, and nation sponsored religion. A lot of this still applies today. Perhaps one of the things that struck me the most was the observation that people get paid more for easier jobs. For example, someone who toils in a field 12 hours a day makes very little money but someone who is educated and works in an office gets paid more without ever breaking a sweat. Of course, it comes down to the question of education, but that’s a whole other topic.
Another thing that I realized about halfway threough the book was that the time travel was not important at all. I was originally disappointed with the plot of “I bumped my head and when I woke up I had gone backwards 1300 years.” But then I realized it didn’t matter how he got there. The time travel wasn’t the story. It was just a tool Twin used to get his charcter into a position where he could make those criticisms, which were really an analogy for things happening in the modern day.
I also liked the fact that this book, much like Frankenstein was a metastory. It satarted out with the author telling us his story, but quickly changed to him reading someone else’s story. I don’t know why but I always love these devices.
In regards to reading eBooks, I must say I find it a wonderful thing. It is so nice to be able to read whenever I have a free moment, without having to carry a bulky book with me. It’s also nice to have a backlit device and thus not have to worry about lighting. There’s also the ability to immediately highlight and look up the definition of any word, which comes in helpful when reading stories written a long time ago.
And then there’s the free books. Project Gutenberg has gone about collecting a lot of older books that are now public domain into electronic format. This makes it so easy to catch up on so many classics that I’ve wanted to read, but haven’t gotten to yet. I haven’t decided what I will read next, but so far I’ve downloaded some Shakespeare, Dante’s Inferno, and Beowulf.
Of course, I’ll still continue to purchase and read some real books, because there are some things that are just better that way. And I’ll probably purchase some eBooks as well, if I can find them at decent prices (vs the hardcover price some publishers insist on).
Posted by Thalanor under Uncategorized |