Still no books!
Toni is getting more jumpy by the
moment and is working himself up into a fit of justified pique at the way the
universe continually stymies his attempts to better himself! I am simply enjoying his frustration
expressed over the non-appearance of mere books, items which do not usually
occupy much emotional space in his universe!
Who would have thought it! At least he now appreciates some of the
stresses in my world where a momentary pause between the instruction to Amazon
to get me a book and its delivery is barely tolerable.
It follows that Kindle was made for
me: it is the Polaroid camera of book buying; the antithesis of delayed
gratification and a more than dangerous and money consuming drug. Kindles should come with a mandatory warning
on the cover: Warning – Book Buying Can Empty Your Account!
I have adopted
the Science Fiction Book Buying Approach to my Kindle purchases. I find it very hard to resist sci-fi and if a
book, irrespective of any form of quality, is put in front of me, I will read
it. This predisposition to lose chunks
of my life, engrossed as I so often was, in badly written fantasy was one with
which I had to deal.
My solution was to concentrate on
one sci-fi author at a time; buy the books second hand; pay no more than 50p
per book. This series of restrictions
meant that I could look at lots of second hand sci-fi books and reject the
majority because they did not conform to the rules for purchase that I had put
in place.
This policy does mean that I have
read everything, and I mean everything, by authors like Isaac Azimov and Robert
Heinlein – and I feel a better person for having done so! So there!
How the SFBBA relates to Kindle
is that I will only buy bargain books; special offer books; bundles of cut rate
books; free books or books which would cost too much to order in the normal way
and which I do not want to have taking up shelf space – which of course does
not exist in my book crowded life.
I have resisted Toni’s suggestion
that I buy a few Kindles and but the whole of my library on them for a variety
of reasons. One it is impracticable (or
do I mean impractical) because not all the books are out of copyright and
available for nothing. The ones that one
has to pay for mean that replacements would cost a fortune.
There are far too many of my
books which do not have a digital version.
The art books would be largely impossible to digitize. Academic books which one needs for reference
are strangely unwieldy in a digital form – I need the ability to flip from
section to section. And so the list goes
on. I imagine that part of the reason
that I don’t want to change in this way is a sort of Luddite, Captain Swing
approach that is only imperfectly hidden by a superficial technological
infatuation when it comes to books. I am
obviously a purist and need the physicality of paper to make the reading
experience complete!
The one thing that has just arrived, well, the two or three
things actually, is/are the memory upgrades that Toni needs for the next stage
of his IT course and I need because he is having one. Nothing petty about my approach to life!
And I have
been told to shut down things as Toni has, already, installed the upgrade in
his laptop, and now it is time for my MacBook Air to have its treatment. Needless to say Toni has been able to upgrade
his non-Mac machine with a greater memory than I am able to do with my machine.
I have left a gap to signify the difference between
upgrading the memory in Toni’s Asus computer and in my upmarket, gleaming,
metallic MacBook Air.
Perhaps I should preface this
little section by saying that I have decided that I will NEVER buy another
Apple Mac product for the rest of my life.
Shoot me if I go back on that statement!
Toni manage to upgrade his RAM
within minutes. Mine, however, was (is)
a real problem.
Firstly, the screws are unique to
Mac and Toni broke two trying to get them out.
The design of the screws are malicious details added by Apple to
discourage any attempt by an owner to do anything to his machine. I went from shop to shop to shop trying to
find a five thingied head screwdriver of the minute proportions needed to get
the bloody screws out. Nothing. And in our registered official Mac dealer I
was told that he, the owner had a screwdriver and screws, they were not for
sale and he didn’t know anywhere where they could be bought. Apple – the friendly company!
I have now ended up buying a
specific Mac necessary micro screwdriver and a set of screwdrivers for what
Toni might find inside if and when he ever gets inside the bloody machine.
But am I bitter? Well, yes I am.
Lunch did manage to lessen my angst – a brilliant meal in
one of our regular restaurants, the restaurant, indeed, where we are going to
have our United Nations Day meal in October.
Each time I go there I convince myself a little more that the choice is
the right one. And the hardware that
Toni needs to complete the job on my machine should be here, at the latest by
the beginning of next week. And it’s not
as if the computer isn’t working or anything, so I am quite prepared to wait.
And at least I
have got my books!
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