I have gone all four decades plus of my life without reading Herman Melville's Moby Dick, a situation I find myself in a position to remedy. Of particular shame is the fact that my mother used to teach that book to high school students. So, instead of the abyss that is pre-5am cable television, I consume breakfast and the classic tale of obsession at once. And not in print, either: this will be my first e-book read.
The technicals: I'm reading it on a netbook with a stand-alone (and free) application called Calibre. I'm very pleased with it and the options for print size and general appearance of the page. For the work itself, I downloaded it from Project Gutenberg (also free) and I'm quite successfully resisting the urge to turn the netbook on its side to read it. Not necessary, and, in fact, clumsy. Reading it keyboard down is quite sufficient. I've even been known to haul it into waiting areas/rooms, since it's unnecessary to be connected to the Internet to use Calibre. The only problem? If your netbook/laptop isn't booted up, you'll have to wait for that. It kind of rules out the quick "pick up and read".
Why an e-book? The wave of the future, friends. My future, especially, as you will soon see.
At the moment, though, I'm about half-way through Moby Dick and I am surprised at how friendly and accommodating the narrator is for the age of the work. There is, of course, more archaic knowledge about whales and whaling than I can almost stand, but the sentence structure is so fluid and pretty that it "feels" in my mind as if it's being "spoken" in a classic boilerplate hand. Melville, it seems, could write just about anything and it would turn out pleasant.
Some words are more pleasant than others, however. A few of my favorite quotes:
- There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.
- ...There is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.
- ...It's against my principles to drink with the man I've diddled.
- ...Man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.
A Question:
Have you taken any forays into e-books? Did you like the format? What was it like?
Posts
There are more classics than I care to admit that I allegedly read in school...but did not. Still got As on the book reports somehow (if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with BS?).
ReplyDeleteI was far more interested in the best of sci-fi when I was in junior and senior high, plus some of the new (and now classic) literature like Heller's Catch 22.
I like reading e-books on my Kindle but find that I still much prefer the printed books. E-books don't fit my reading style well, whether for fiction or nonfiction. I'm too much of a page-flipper and often skim the less-than-enthralling portions. Neither of which work well on an e-book, no matter the reading device.
But different strokes...
Walt Shiel
It took me quite a while to warm to the classics, but I've always been a reader of sci-fi: Dune and Shakespeare's Planet by Clifford Simak are a couple of favorites. I've read much more fantasy and action/adventure: C.S. Lewis's Narnia, Tolkien, Cussler, Clancy, Brust, Simon Green, George R. R. Martin, and Vonnegut, with the occasional Feist and Marcinko thrown in.
ReplyDeleteThere is much to be said for handling a book or magazine in print. It doesn't require electricity to make it work (other than to read it), you can digest it at your own pace, it's portable and it's always "on", as I mentioned in the post.
We can't escape the fact, however, that these things we love are made of things that help us breathe. Stop all book printing tomorrow? Absolutely not. I plan on distributing my work in print when it gets to that point. Consider alternatives and suggest them as viable possibilities? All about that.
Another good thing about e-books? No paper cuts. 8-)#
This may be a silly question, but are all pc/laptop based books considered e-books?
ReplyDeleteThe reason I ask is that Dan and I use a software called MyScribe for our text books. We love it except the Print feature doesn't always work. We can highlight and take notes in MyScribe, but it is not completely portable in this form.