My birthday isn't for another couple of weeks but you know how it is when you go out on a 'research' browse. Like the times we've gone to look at puppies with a deposit in our back pocket. Who ever walks away from a litter of puppies empty-handed? I digress. The Nano that I bought over four years ago to drown out my *cough* vocally-impressive neighbour turned out to be a turning of the tide for me. The beautiful classical pieces meant to provide a soothing background for reading sessions on the patio were hardly ever played. I had discovered the world of BBC podcasts and how exciting a thing it was! Why I don't have an English accent by now I'll never know, I must put in at least two hours a day while walking the dog and more if it's housework day.
While I miss the old technology, my Nano was beginning to do silly things...sometimes frustrating things. It was time for an upgrade. It wasn't love at first sight with the new device. I said quite a few bad words in the early stages, like when it was telling me that my password was wrong. Over and over again. How was I to know that the little arrow pointing up meant 'shift' for capitalization? Needless to say, the packaging sat on my dining room table for a couple of days until I had absolutely made up my mind to keep the %^#* thing.
Signing out the latest copy of iPod touch for Dummies (yes, that's me) provided me with little help initially. Once my podcasts were all sorted out though I was seduced by the idea that one must have as many apps as possible to fill in the lovely screen when it's turned on. The ability to download ebooks was a possibility but I've never been tempted to read stories that way. I like to travel long distances to scour bookshelves, get head spins from all the bending up and down, delight in the aroma of a sooty chimney from 1947 wafting from the pages of a cloth bound book. Then I remembered a site talked about in the blogsphere many moons ago called girlebooks. They had a copy of E. M. Delafield's War Workers and it was free. Hmmm...so after some flipping through my instructional book for dummies and some google searches and a lot of crossing fingers, hoping and praying, I was excited to the moon to find my download had worked!
I can't tell you how alluring the sensation is to simply click a few buttons and have a book on my shelf. Reading it is another thing, the screen seems way too small and I can't imagine getting through a whole book in that state. But nevermind, I am merely a USB cord away from adding Rebecca West's Return of the Soldier and some short stories by Katherine Mansfield. Just the thing when faced with nothing to do but check my cuticles or stare at the numbers whipping by while my husband pumps gas into the car. So far I've resisted the urge to add Angry Birds but who knows just how crazy I just might get?
For a woman with an inner-downstairs girl, born in the wrong century, and one of the last people walking around my community without a cell phone this is all ridiculously appealing. Not to worry though, I am still very much looking forward to a good 'down on my hands and knees' poke around the bookshops on Charing Cross Road next month.
Anyone have a favourite app or ebook site to recommend?