A few weeks ago, the New Yorker ran an article on e-reading, and I was galvanized to convert my iPod Touch into an e-reader. Incredibly, I was able to complete the project, which consisted mainly of following instructions—never my strong suit (hence my otherwise inexplicable inability to cook the simplest meal)—largely on my own. Even more incredibly, hundreds of classics turn out to be available free for the downloading on Project Gutenberg. On the advice of a friend who is addicted to George Eliot on audiotape, I chose Middlemarch as my debut e-novel.
And I am loving it. I love not having to hold the book open, which—I know this sounds pathetic—gets tiring, though you don't notice it till you stop. I love reading against an illuminated background, which confers a movie-like excitement. I love the magical potential of having a library's worth of books on a device smaller than a matchbox. I love the security of knowing I'll never be forced to read out-of-date women's magazines on a couch in a doctor's office ever again. And in particular, I love George Eliot. A few samples:
"Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream of fellowship with its own oary-footed kind." Yes! A description of my feet that captures the whole clumsy mess. I am indeed an "oary-footed kind"!
And then there's a vague waffler who is one of those people with "glutinously indefinite minds": Is this chemo brain?
And finally, the dilemma of my life, put compactly: "She could not reconcile the anxieties of a spiritual life involving eternal consequences, with a keen interest in the gimp and artificial protrusions of drapery." I have done away with "artificial protrusions of drapery," what with my mastectomy and all. But that "keen interest in the gimp" and other worldly distractions plagues me and keeps me from being a serious person.
2 comments:
First of all, I love that you figured out how to convert your iPod Touch into an e-reader! I wonder if my regular iPod would be able to accommodate that.
I love that you can't follow recipes, I can't either. It's embarrassing. Once I tried to make a Tarte Tartine (spelling?) from Julia Child's cookbook and that was the last time I tried anything new. (That was in 1999.)
And could you explain that last paragraph to me? "...the gimp and artificial protrusions of drapery."
Well, gimp is a kind of ornamental trimming, and I assume artificial protrusions of drapery are things like hoops and bustles, but I figure the phrase extends to things like shaped bodices. It's just a wonderful profusion of verbiage, don't you think?
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