The Electrocution of the Bookworm

The bookworm has been electrocuted, but don't be sad. There's a happy ending.

At my request, my brother gave me a Kindle for Christmas and I have to say I like it better than I thought I would. I was intrigued with the notion of an electric book but withheld judgment, waiting to see if it would do the reading trick for me, and so far, it has.

My only problem centers on heft. The Kindle is pretty light weight, which is good. The heft problem has to do with the fact that I apparently gauge the length of a book by its weight and girth, not to mention the number of pages. My Kindle doesn’t give me page numbers and it weighs the same, whether I’m reading War and Peace or a memoir by someone who hasn’t yet lived very long. It does give me the percentage of what I’ve read. For example, my Kindle will have something like 38% written at the bottom of the screen. But percentage of what? Thirty-eight percent of 200 pages or 1000? So, what happens is I’ll be barreling along, happy as that legendary worm eating its way through a real paper and ink book, when all of a sudden, I’m at the end. Okay, the climax was there and the ending was satisfactory and the little percentage sign did say 98, but I’m still nonplussed and undone, and that’s because I couldn’t count the number of pages I had left as I was moving along.

Who would have thought, when I was a little girl, that I would someday read an electric book? I remember hearing about how, one day, we would be able to see the people we talk to on the phone.  This has obviously already happened with Skype and that latest IPhoney thing. I also remember laughing about the notion of smellivision, technology which would enable us to actually smell what Mrs. Cleaver and Aunt Bee were baking in their cozy kitchens.

But an electric book! Who could have envisioned such a thing and why would anyone want one?

I've been a reader almost as far back as I can remember. I recall sitting in the back seat of my parents' car, book in lap, knowing I could read. I like to think I was somewhere around four, but it may have been later. I do remember it was after second grade  when I finished one of my brother's Hardy Boys books, which was too hard for me to fully enjoy, but I still took great pride in my feat.  And then there was the great joy I had as a child, which emanated from my being able to eat the occasional sandwich meal, not with my family around the dining table, but while lying in my bed with a book as my dinner companion.

Other reading memories as a child include:

• 365 Bedtime Stories.  I read this book for years, even when I was too old for it.  My kids have tried to find it to give me as a gift, but, so far, no luck.
• The Secret Garden.
• Those biographies of famous people with the silhouettes on the front cover.  I only read the girl ones: Martha Washington, Clara Barton, Juliette Low.
• Trixie Belden.  I loved Trixie and Honey and the Gang and so wanted something exciting like that to happen in my life.
• The Diary of Anne Frank. Whatever goodness I have in me was bolstered by reading this book at a relatively young age.
• Lost Horizon.  I don't remember how old I was when I read this one but I knew it was one of my mother's favorite books and it became one of mine too.
• Born Free.  My mother actually read this book to me when I was about ten and we spent the summer at my grandparents' house in Phoenix.

In fact, many of of my childhood memories have to do with reading, coming back from the old Savannah Public Library on Bull Street with a load of books, picking through them, deciding which one I would read first.  I was a child who lived a dual reality, one of my own making and the other based on whatever book I was reading.  I could say the same about my adult life, a life made richer by the books I've read. 

And so, I think I'll juice up the Kindle and browse my digital stacks to figure out what I'll read next.  It's nice not to have to make my way to the bookstore or the public library.

But wait, I just found my mother's copy of Lost Horizon, all dusty and forlorn on a bookshelf.  I think I'll pick it up, and read it again.  It feels good in my hands; not too light, not too heavy and it has just a right number of pages.