All art is quite useless.

[katernater]

I love this book so much that I want to go to bed with it and maybe slap it around a little (but only if it's cool with that).

I saw a woman with one of those Kindle wireless reading devices at the doctor's office the other day. I think those things take some of the fun out of reading. Me, I like to be physical with my books. I like to carry them around in my purse, bend back their spines, dog-ear their corners, and write my name on the inside cover. And there's that "book perfume" -- the smell of pages -- that's practically a pheromone. You don't get any of that with a Kindle. Of course, I was among the first in line to pooh-pooh the idea of a physical newspaper in favour of Web-based editions because they were, "so much more convenient." Because I am already pressed for time when I am not looking up videos of a cat opening a jar of peanuts. Right.

msconduct asked me to expand on the Anne Geddes Poster Incident from my last post. The clinic is the walk-in sort, so you can only imagine the odd lot of people in the waiting room at any given time. As such, each exam room is designed to be as neutral looking as possible -- taupe walls, floors the colour of used Wrigley's sticks -- with a couple of pops of colour in the medical posters on the backs of the doors. The room the nurse put me in was obviously used for pediatric consults because there was this giant, sun-faded Anne Geddes poster on the wall. I actually tried to find a picture of it online, but it's probably been discontinued due to the creep factor. The poster features a bunch of babies showcasing letters of the alphabet, some in various stages of undress (the babies, not the letters) lying on top of vegetables. Typical Anne Geddes fare.

I was left alone with it while the nurse went to get the equipment to draw blood and when she came back, I mentioned that I thought Anne Geddes' photography was always a little weird and that I couldn't see how they got the babies to look that docile in the first place. The nurse sort of sighed and shook her head. "I did my downstairs bathroom in Anne Geddes," she told me, "before my husband asked me to redecorate." I asked her why. She hesitated, snapping the end of the tourniquet a couple of times, very uncomfortable. "He told me he could never have a bowel movement when he was in there. He said it was too weird."

True facts.

So, there you go, msconduct. In the end, it all comes down to a poop joke.

Comments

[moonlightstorm.livejournal.com]

THAT CAT STEALS PEANUTS. *saves into youtube favorites*

I think I would kill for a Kindle. I mean, I love the feeling of a new book and I love being able to have all my books next to each other and I love being able to dig through them looking for one to reread. But I also read a lot of ebooks and would be completely fine having a Kindle with me to read books on the go so I'm not always tossing a book or two into my backback when I go out.

[katernater.livejournal.com]

"It's just the two raptors, right? You're sure the other one is contained?"
"Sure. Unless they figure out a WAY TO OPEN DOORS."

Are you a two-book backpacker, too? I feel naked when I don't have at least one in my purse. You can put up to 200 books on a Kindle which, I have to admit, is pretty cool.

[moonlightstorm.livejournal.com]

That is me exactly. If I try to bring just one, I think, "But what if I finish it? I'll be bookless." Or if I haven't started it, I think, "What if I hate it? I'll be bookless." And there's nothing I hate more than having nothing to do in between classes or on the bus from Federal Way to Seattle and back every day, so I bring them with me everywhere. I can only imagine my rapture at having 200 portable books whenever I go anywhere.

[another-myself.livejournal.com]

[katernater.livejournal.com]

:O

[another-myself.livejournal.com]

[antiquitea.livejournal.com]

I saw a lady with one of those when I went to the clinic last week! I found it fascinating, but at the same time odd. I'm like you - I prefer the physicalness of a book. After looking over her shoulder for a couple of moments, I went back to reading my dog eared, green along the edges, "smells like Grandpa's den" copy of The Young Lions. It's Heaven, and Heaven is currently in my purse.

[another-myself.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on the Kindle thing. It seems like the idea is an iPod for books and while the idea is good, I like being able to turn pages and place bookmarks (of the red color, of course) to mark my place and my progress. I love filling my shelves with books - I don't think a Kindle would ever cut it.

And Anne Geddes scares the tar out of me. Disturbing.

[awesomesquared.livejournal.com]

I think the concept of a Kindle is better than its practice. I mean, the iPod is amazing because you can switch from music to music to music. With a Kindle, the literary iPod, you could switch from book to book to book. My brain, I think, would fry.

[msconduct.livejournal.com]

Aha! Thanks! I had no idea she was so famous in the US. I should have stuck with the guy who took me to the school ball (US prom), as he moved to New York to mastermind her US career. (This is not some amazing coincidence, BTW: in New Zealand we all know everybody else.)

And it seems that the creep factor is as international as her fame. Here it was very overt, a big backlash about whether she was abusing the babies by shoving them into pumpkins, plus the inevitable disquiet about the stuff being fodder for paedophiles. I just find it nauseatingly sugary. A whole bathroom? Argh! And urgh!

I must admit the lack of paperiness about the Kindle sets my face against it, but it must definitely have its uses. My recent experiment with talking books on my MP3 player has lured me away from paper at least for travelling. As well as being able to take twenty books for no extra weight, thus being freed from the gnawing terror of running out of books, I found I was able to read doing tedious stuff like packing. More reading opportunities = utter win.

[highlander_ii]

The one person I saw with a Kindle used it for toting around fanfic. Which, I think for the non-physical book things, it's a good idea, but I like having my books.

And, like I said to someone before - you can't have the author autograph your Kindle... well, not if you intend to read with it again. XD