I can’t actually remember the last time I’ve read a book. I do read a lot; I just haven’t been reading books. An honest to God book. As opposed to a manual. Or a FAQ.
It’s odd considering how close I live to a library. Thousands of books for free so tantalisingly close yet I steer clear. I do have a good reason, though. Four, actually. Specifically, the four library books I haven’t returned since 1989. I’m sure the total fines are in the five digit range now. Sometimes, as I lie in bed, I wonder if this will be the night the librarians kick down my door and drag me off. I expect my body would be eventually found with date stamp marks all over it and I would be used as a cautionary tale to warn children about crossing the guardians of books.
Anyway, one of the reasons I was keen on getting a PDA is the amazing amount of free ebooks available.
I’m delighted to report reading ebooks on the T|E is an absolute joy as the text is crisp on the bright backlit screen. (And as I pointed out earlier, the screen is bright enough for you to read during a blackout.)
However, I have been frustrated by the number of different formats and readers available. It would seem you’d need three (or more) ebook readers installed to get access to a decent variety of ebooks. I have ereader (which was bundled with the T|E) and Plucker, and I still need one or two more ebook readers.
“The soul of brevity”
I’ve just finished Barry G. Galvin‘s Mini-Sagas for the mind, a free ebook collection of haiku-like vignettes, each written in 50 words.
(I snagged the 650kb ereader version from memoware but you can get the PDF version if you don’t have a Palm OS ereader.)
So what are mini-sagas like? Here’s “Delegate” from Galvin’s collection:
“John, can you organise my travel itinerary please. Sally, type this letter for me please and put it in the post. Wiliam, call Nelson and tell him I’ll be late for our meeting this afternoon.”
“What reason should I give him?”
“Tell him I’ve got a lot to do.”
That’s a mini-saga in its entirety.
(Brian W. Aldiss, who Galvin credits for introducing him to the form, has his own collection of mini-sagas online. Check out The Uprising.)
It’s an intriguing form requiring technical skill for brevity and storytelling ability to provide the hook necessary to engage the reader. It’s fiction for a generation used to quick cuts and sound bites, and I wonder if it will eventually evolve to microsketches the length of RSS reader summaries. Fire up your RSS reader and bam, five microstories from a single RSS feed.
