Me and my e-reader

(from 2012)

Mrs Occasional and I started camping again in our mature years. We’d camped as youngsters, and then used youth hostels when the family was young. But my daughter’s insistence that we join her and hubby for a folk festival a few years ago saw us camping again. And that’s when the problems of reading in bed really started. To try and read a book while lying on a rapidly deflating air bed, holding the book above your head with a penlight torch gripped between your teeth, proved to be a less than relaxing experience. We even bought special torches that fitted around our heads, as if we were going coal mining or something. But the slightest nod and light danced off the roof of the tent, annoying the other reader.

Mrs Occasional had an early Nintendo – she likes those sorts of things – and one of the programs was a collection of “100 classics.” Reading those on the small Nintendo screen was a great improvement, except that at bedtime you don’t always feel like working your way through the books you did in school. The Victorians had a way with words – using two when even one was superfluous. We wanted to retire and read lighter fare at times.

The first dedicated e-readers with their e-ink format were a pain in the wallet. But then the ubiquitous iPad hit the market. For actual reading with the lights out they were not nearly as good as dedicated e-readers, but all the geeks bought first edition iPads and unloaded their neglected e-readers onto eBay. And thus it came to pass that that Mr and Mrs Occasional became proud owners of two identical Sony e-readers, with illuminated glass screens – and peace and contentment reigned.

Years later we still have the same devices, even though they came to us pre-used. An artistic use of dry transfer letters ensures we don’t mix them up. With extra memory cards they can hold a great amount of books, and even though by today’s standards they are a bit clunky they still work fine for us.

With a freeware program called Calibre, I can transform nearly everything into the ePub format that Sony use. Do I want to read a lengthy chapter of history research from another blog? Cut and paste it into Word, save as a pdf, and Calibre will immediately turn it into ePub – which allows a reader to choose different sizes of font for the page and their eyesight.

Of course, you can read books on virtually anything nowadays. My daughter can read books on her miniscule phone. This is great as long as you don’t mind having only one sentence available at any one time. A standard paperback seems to run at around 4000 pages, and you risk a severe case of repetitive strain injury to your thumb. So – horses for courses – if you want an e-reader – get a dedicated one.

So why not buy a Kindle? For a start, our e-reading predated the Kindle. However, as noted above, there is a format called ePub, which was designed to be the industry standard. I can download the latest books for free from the public library in ePub – they self-destruct after three weeks; I can download the main religious magazines I read in ePub; and if I feel like delving into the history that Rachael and Bruce have researched, I can download all the original sources in ePub too. Whereas Kindle have done an Apple – invented a dedicated system that generally only works on their machines. Fine if you only want to obtain books from Amazon, but too limited for my needs.

So what is on my e-reader? (Wake up now – I am sure by now that you are riveted to this post to find out...)  As is my wont, I am about half way through half a dozen books at present. I first downloaded the classics and re-read Dickens Nicholas Nickleby – well, the first half anyway. I love Dickens’ descriptions (e.g. Wackford Squeers – “he had but one eye, whereas the popular prejudice runs in favour of two”) – but in those pre-TV days he did go on a bit. I got to the Madeline Bray sub-plot, and faltered somewhat. Every so often I will go back and do another chapter.

Then as a collector and member of the Jerome K Jerome society I downloaded virtually his whole oeuvre – and actually read them all again, which was a big step up from just admiring them in the bookcase. Some of my favourite authors were sufficiently out of copyright in some lands to allow me access; I also bought an el cheapo CD containing ePubs of about 2500 thrillers off eBay and have been stolidly working my way through memories of a misspent youth. Then there is the first major book produced by the religion I research – it suddenly seemed an oversight not to have actually read it from cover to cover – so that is on the go. Some monthly journals always go on there, and I am half way through a certain book called Pixie Warrior.

As a practicing bibliomane, whose life has been spent falling over stacks of books and crying “Eureka” when prized volumes turn up dirt cheap, I never thought I would succumb to the charms of an electronic gadget. But succumb I have, for sheer convenience and on-the-go, while the original volumes still provide a decorative alternative to wallpaper. Of course there is still nothing like holding the real thing. But to take a library of hundreds, even thousands, of books around with you in your pocket – it has a lot going for it.

If and when my Sony goes to that great scrap heap in the sky, I will probably go for a Nook, or a Kobo, or even another Sony, one that still uses what was supposed to be the industry standard. But for now – time to turn out the lights, click the switch – select from the menu – and – go on – what will it be for tonight? Let’s have some bedclothes back Mrs Occasional, and I wonder what she’s reading...?