2008
you make your little way
maura @ 9:50 pm
So I read a book on my phone this week.
Just typing it makes it seem like the future, doesn’t it? I mean, seriously, I read a BOOK on my PHONE. The flying cars must be next!
The book was Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow of bing bong fame. It’s a YA terrorismtechnotyranny kind of thing, an enjoyable and compelling read. Because he’s all open source in the hizzouse, you can download it and read it for free. Also because he’s a widely published writer who already has a roomful of money. JOKING! Sort of.
But see, here’s the thing. There’s a lot from the internets that I could be downloading and reading. I mean, practically every journal article I read these days is a PDF. And there’s tons of fiction that’s out of copyright out there, too.
But I don’t. Why? Well, for work/research stuff, it’s because I need to be able to jot down marginal notes (though, to be honest, they are often along the lines of “right on!” or “that’s stupid!”). But the real reason is that it’s just not that fun to read big fat chunks of text on a computer. Esp. when you sit in front of a computer for much of the day.
Enter the phone! I can take it anywhere, and that’s what I did. It’s much more fun to read a novel while propped up by 3 pillows in bed than while sitting in my hard desk chair. My only complaint is that Stanza, this cool iphone ebook reader, is a huge battery suck, so it’s not like you can read for 12 hrs straight or anything. (Not that I have time to do that these days, anyway.)
9 comments on “you make your little way”
I can hardly ever find my phone, and when I can it’s out of batteries and/or money. I sent Ben a tanka about dust once. Also I get a lot of messages from Coco Beach. Alas, they are from some misguided vet and a Blockbuster, not Jeannie!
Har, too true — when we are reading books on them we know the phones have taken over!
I like my iphone, but more for it’s internettines than its phoneness. I dislike talking on the phone and have spent many a daydream wishing I didn’t have to have a cellphone at all. I hate having to carry it around with me everywhere. But with a kid, I feel like it’s an unfortunate necessity. (Though of course our parents all raised is without cellphones and we turned out okay!)
I demanded that my brother hand over his phone as we drove to the hospital the other night! I knew mine was somewhere all the way upstairs, who knows where and how much battery.
Unfortunately for me, his is one of those i-Got-No-Damn-Buttons-Phones! I was smart enough to turn it on, somehow got into his text message inbox (did not read, ok not much) but had to hand it over to Ben to, shall we say, “dial!”
Later, that evening…my brother was on his way to a party. Ben & A. were still at the hospital, I came home to put the baby to bed. He had his directions on the phone, which was still with Ben, but he thought he could manage. 1/2 hour later he comes back, “I need my phone!” so we go visit A. and reclaim the phone. They’d been watching The Wiggles & Maisy on it.
Sheesh, I seriously doubt he could walk down a long hallway (short one, probably OK) w/o his iPhone!!!
Yes, the one thing the iphone can be kind of tricky with is the phone part! And it is slippery, so the working it with one hand thing is kind of hard.
OTOH, you can watch Maisy on it!
And speaking of being 70 yrs old, for actual phone reasons I was recently verrrrry tempted to get that old folks cellphone w/huge giant buttons and no extra stuff! But then J got us iphones, what can you do.
Yeah, I could stare at my phone all day (assuming I could find it) and probably not see Maisy!
Ah, once again Marlys has the answer!
“Just cover a Band-Aid box with glitter and say ‘Hello’ to it constantly!”
http://www.marlysmagazine.com/ (Play Ideas from Marlys)
It’s a must have! I’d be working on one right now, except that I’m practicing my poses.
terrorismtechnotyranny kind of thing — isn’t that what happens when you read a book on your freaking phone? Now listening to a book on your phone — that is so comfortably 2003 that we don’t even blog about it.