There's just something about having the world's great (and not so great) literature in the palm of your hand. Any title in Amazon's considerable online library ready for immediate consumption. An all-you-can-eat buffet of free samples. Free internet access--allowing you to peruse Wikipedia at length without worrying about petty details like cell phone data plans.
It's exhilarating.
So, what happens when you take all this literary power away? Your heart-rate increases, your palms get sweaty, you start rummaging for your non-functioning Kindle at the most random times. I swear. It's worse than Facebook.
As you may have guessed, my Kindle is dead. Sometime in the last month the charge cord disappeared, and--as might be expected from someone with the memory of a goldfish--I have no idea where it is. This is... indeed... a disadvantage I hadn't foreseen. Having to charge a device so infrequently that the charger has enough time to get away.
More to the point, the source of my distress is a book, hidden within the memory recesses of my electronic narcotic. The Elusive Pimpernel (1908), written by Baroness Orczy. A tale of adventure, intrigue, and true love. A good book. A reaaaallly good book. The Scarlet Pimpernel had just confronted his arch enemy, Armand Chauvelin, in the heart of hostile France, when... all of a sudden...
I couldn't turn to the next page.
Yep. I'm perpetually stuck at the 66% mark.
Due to the nature of the Kindle, when the power dies, the screen retains whatever was last displayed. It's kind of a cruel irony. You have a device that can store thousands of books and access unlimited stores of information online... but, when the power goes out... you're restricted to a single page. And, if we're going to be honest with ourselves, there's only so much information you can glean from a single page (microfilm or no microfilm).
After reading the same page about 10 times, I felt I was either grasping at the edges of insanity or trying to milk a stone sculpture. In desperation, I set the device down and grabbed my laptop, trying to hunt down a fellow literary addict with a spare cable.
Finally, success. Someone had succumbed to the wiles of the new 4th generation Kindle and had a spare USB cable I could use.
Still, I won't have it in my hot little hands until Friday night. That's.... 24 hours away...
1,440 minutes...
86,400 seconds...
...
I'm not gonna make it.
Until next time,
- Daniel
Where's your engineering background? Splice a new cable together! Break out the soldering iron!
ReplyDeleteFree internet access? Everywhere? That *would* be hard to part with...
ReplyDeleteI feel bad for you, but once again your post made me laugh. ;P
ReplyDeleteI plan to finish reading my old-school hardcover vesion in about....5 minutes.
I won't gloat. I won't. XD