Thursday, December 30, 2010

Clear Dawn, Motor Started Eventually

Well it's almost a new year and a beautiful clear, cold Bellingham morning -- a perfect opportunity to pluck a few keys and get this old machine rolling again.
I bought a Nook, and was just comparing the readerly qualities between it and a paperback book at my desk.
The Nook's page is smaller, but there's no inner crevasse of a margin that needs to be tipped towards the light.
The heft is the same.
And I could say that there is a sensuality of paper that can't be matched by plastic but that's subjective.  But I'll say it anyway.
On the other hand, the damn thing can hold 1500 books, and I can check out books from the public library, get Google Books, and shop at our local Village Books as well as the nefarious Barnes & Noble.
So for my first two options I chose "Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi" by Geoff Dyer and "Just Kids" by Patti Smith which unbelievably won a National Book Award.  I'm grazing a bit in the Dyer, but have several paper texts to put away first.
On to the new year, beginning appropriately enough with a wedding on New Year's Eve (my friend Jim).
ciao.

2 comments:

cile said...

Happy New Year, Paul!

Welcome to the dark side(the Nook)!

Robert Lopresti said...

I think it is cool that you can now download books to your computer via the local bookstore. Amazon has yet to bring an author to our town for a lecture. Of course, my wife works at the bookstore so I'm prejudiced.