In 2007 Jeff Bezos took an ipad and mated it with a copy of War & Peace. Possibly artificially inseminated, they never told me. Thus was born: The Kindle. 
In about 2008 I reluctantly, begrudgingly, moaningly, bought one. An ‘e-reader’. I hated the idea, hated the thought, hated pretty much everything about it, except ‘it’ itself. Because it was and is the most wonderful invention since the internal combustion engine. And look how that one turned out!!! You can take 5 ‘books’ on holiday and it still weighs 25grams. Possibly 74grams, no fucking idea, light enough that you never have to worry. If you take 50 books instead, it still weighs the same. I have no clue how that works either, but there ya go. So one holiday and I was totally sold on it, even though I’ve always loved books. They’re tactile, they have covers, they smell of paper, all the good things, yet replace them with yet another ‘device’ and all your worries disappear.

(as a ‘PS’, on that very first kindle holiday, on day 2 I managed to sit on Mel’s one and cracked it. Even though I’m not as heavy as the scales may say I am. And I thought ‘a book wouldn’t crack, would it?’ But again, we learned a valuable lesson. Which is that Mel can be very loud when screaming.)

I have a system. I only buy paperbacks for my kindle. Never hardbacks. But… but… but… I know, on the kindle there’s no difference. Except the price. For the same download you save a tenner waiting for the paperback. So I generally do.

Thus, out came The Ink Black Heart, by Robert Galbraith. Who is, some of the time, JK Rowling. When she’s not in Harry Potter mode. And we love his… errrr… her? books. But its only out in hardback… owwwwww… that’s 18 quid a download… owwwwwww… but if we wait its only gonna be a tenner… owwwwwwww. Then Mel went into our local charity shop to drop off some old stuff. And saw: The Ink Black Heart, sitting there, hardback, perfect condition. And it was… four quid. WE ARE SORTED!!!!

And then I picked it up to read it. In fact it took both of us. 890 pages of… probably paper. Its a brick. And weighs… ever such a lot. So much that I don’t wish to hold it on the tube, have no desire to shlep it round in my ruck-sack, and have to rest it on a pillow when I read it in bed. If I want to move it downstairs I’ll fix up a pulley.

Yeah, I love ‘books’, but just not necessarily in the physical sense any longer.

Happy Reading

A xxxx