A touching story

Wanda bought a hard-cover book yesterday.

That was very exciting for me, because while she's reading a physical book, she's not reading her Kobo.  I immediately offered to keep it company, because I knew she'd bought a couple of books I wanted to read.

I have the wireless Kobo, and she has the Kobo Touch, so it took a while to get used to how to use hers.  It's much faster at page turning than mine, which resulted in me accidentally turning too many pages a few times.  It also has a dictionary feature, which lets you look up words your finger rests on for too long.  I took advantage of this functionality to accidentally look up unfamiliar words like "rule" and "it".

Over all, I really enjoyed it - not enough to go out and buy one, but it is definitely a step up from my model. 

When I was done the books I wanted to read, I went back to my Kobo and found myself tapping on the screen to turn the pages.

Paper or plastic?

I mentioned a while ago that I got a Kobo e-reader, and I thought I'd share some thoughts now that I've had a chance to get used to it. Keep in mind that I have the wireless version that pre-dated the touch, so some of this might be different on the touch.

It's been a few months, and I still have not bought a single ebook. I have bought two paper books. One of them will be passed around a group of friends, but mostly it feels strange to spend money on an ebook. (Yes, I have worked in high tech since 1995. And yes, I do occasionally buy music online. I don't really know why it feels different with a book.)

Having said that, I've never bought many books. I read a lot - if I bought every book I read for $10, I could easily spend $160 - $200 a month on books. And I wouldn't be able to walk in my house. Since I'll read almost anything, I borrow books from the library, friends, and family.

It's definitely not the same experience as a paper book - there are pros and cons to each. Here's what I've found so far.

Paper or plastic?

• Borrowing library books - Plastic. Much easier, faster, and it can be done from the couch.
• Returning library books - Plastic. It took me a while to figure out how to do this, but now I love it - especially since Ottawa Public Library only lets you have 10 ebooks out at once.
• Storage - Plastic. No piles of books around, just one little device. Well, OK, fewer piles of books around.
  
• Killing spiders - Paper. Plastic might work for killing spiders, but I suspect it wouldn't work for anything else afterwards.
• Going back a few pages to reread something - Paper. There's no concept of "It was on the bottom quarter of a left-hand page" with an ereader. And I find turning multiple pages at once really slow.
  
• Skipping ahead to make sure an enjoyable character survives the book - Paper. Um, not that I do that.
• Borrowing books someone else has bought - Paper. If anyone knows how to do this (legally) on an ereader, let me know.

Some books (and again, keep in mind that these are borrowed books, not purchased books) are better formatted than other, and a lot of them are a little too close to the physical book. For example, a lot of ebooks have as their second page an excerpt from the book or some quotes about the author. In a physical book, that gives you some information about whether you'd like the book. In an ebook, it's too late - you already have the book.

I'm really enjoying the Kobo - I'm reading a lot more (even by my standards), but I'm also reading things I might never have come across in a paper book world. I'm also considering figuring out how to make PDFs that work with it so that so that I can move my recipe book onto the Kobo.

Of course, given how splattered some pages in my recipe book are, maybe that's not such a good idea.

Road trip

A couple of months ago, Wanda and I started talking about going to Toronto for the weekend. Originally, we were talking about going the weekend after Labour Day, but that turned out to be the community corn roast weekend, so we decided to wait until this weekend.

Last week I started to think that Toronto was too far to go for no particular reason. We talked about Montreal instead (since it's a two-hour drive instead of five), but decided on Kingston (also two hours).

Everything was set until I hurt my ankle on Wednesday.

The annoying part is that I didn't even do anything - I just got up from my desk at work and walked towards the kitchen and thought "gee, my ankle hurts". Since I didn't do anything in particular, I went to boxing that night anyway.

By Thursday morning, it was clear that boxing was a mistake. (I figured that out when I had to hit the brakes and almost screamed from the pain.)

My ankle rapidly recovered, though, and although it's still a bit tender, we decided to go to Kingston yesterday.

It was a beautiful day for it - the sun was shining, but it wasn't super hot. We walked through the farmer's market and around the downtown area. We went down by the water. We wandered in and out of the different shops and stopped at the Mug and Truffle Chocolate Cafe.

And we went to Indigo, where I bought Wanda a Kobo electronic reader as a thank you for trimming the hedges this year.

She was ridiculously excited. When we got home, she plugged it in and immediately downloaded some books. When she came upstairs this morning, she had already finished her first book.

The only problem is that now I want one too.

Where I've been

It's been kind of quiet around here lately.

Part of that is that I've been much more social than usual lately. Last week I thought "Well, at least next week I won't be too social, I'm working 11:30 - 8. So far this week: went to the gym twice (including BodyCombat for the first time in 6 months - ouch!), went to the doctor, went out for breakfast with a friend, went for coffee with another friend, and had a 9:30 conference call. I've also: pulled some weeds, took the car in to get a headlight fixed, cleaned the kitchen and bathroom, read a week's worth of accumulated newspapers, picked (and ate) the first tomato and the first 3 cucumbers from the garden, and iced my elbow at least once a day.

The other part is the fault of my friend Jennifer.

You see, last week she let me the first four Vampire Academy books, with the comment that they were better than Twilight.

That's kind of like being more nutritious than a Big Mac, so I didn't get too excited about them, but I brought the first one to work last week. The books are about living Vampires (Moroi), their half-human/half-vampire guardians, and dead vampires (strigoi) who are basically the bad guys. The first chapters were a little confusing.

On Monday, I got far enough into the book that I was hooked. I finished book one on Monday.

And book two on Tuesday.

And book three on Wednesday. (Can you see where this is going?)

I'm currently half way through book four. (What can I say? It's bigger than the others.)

On the way home, I stopped in at Chapters to buy book 5. I wasn't entirely sure where to look for it - they're young adult books, so that was going to be my first stop, but I wasn't sure that's where they'd be.

I still don't know - book 5 was on a table 3 feet inside the door.

(BTW Jennifer, if you don't have book 5, you can probably borrow it by Monday ... unless I suck Wanda into reading them too.)

I am completely exhausted. I suspect part of it is because of the time change.

What's that? The time change was weeks ago?

I wish someone had told my alarm clock that. You see, I bought my alarm clock years ago. It changes time automatically - but unfortunately, the dates on which the time changes were shifted a couple of years ago. This means my alarm clock is wrong four times a year - including this morning. Yup, it woke me up an hour early.

Other contributing factors include me being too foolish to go to bed at a reasonable hour, excessive food preparation (for no good reason - it's not like I had people over today), and the fact that I worked Friday, which made Thursday evening exhausting.

This coming week I work from 10 - 6:30. My plan is to get up and go to the gym in the morning. That should (in theory) give me a reasonable amount of time in the evening.

Also, remember the online book club I'm participating in? Our first book was Twilight. Our second book is Moby-Dick.

I need to read 10 chapters by Thursday. So far, I have read one. I'm finding it interesting, but it's harder to read than, say, a book that doesn't mention a spleen in the first paragraph. I think I'll take it to work to read during lunch. The weather has been beautiful lately, so hopefully I'll be able to sit outside in the sun and read. Wish me luck.