booked

I buy a book on the 765 bus this morning. And not just any old book, but the current Booker Prize winner, The Finkler question. It—the book and the fact that I can purchase it while on a bus—makes me laugh out loud, even on the bus, en route to Box Hill to buy a mortar and pestle, not a laugh-inspiring task.

It all starts a couple of nights ago. Back pain immobilises me, so I’m sitting bolt upright at my good woman’s kitchen table, bored. My Android smart-phone is within reach so I begin exploring its functions. It’s smarter than I am. I press Camcorder and it makes a 57-second video. I resolve to produce a feature film tomorrow.

Perhaps Flashlight is a film editing tool. But no, it turns out to be a torch. My phone is a torch—with adjustable beam. So much more useful than a video editor.

A Kindle icon I have not noticed tops the page. I know Kindle is an eReader, having read about them, and considered buying one so I don't have to lug a library of books around France for four weeks.

I open the application and it invites me to install Kindle on my Android. Voilà. Three out-of-copyright books with long-dead authors—Treasure Island, Pride and prejudice and Aesop's fables—are in my archive.

Recently I ordered and paid for a book online for my mother, impressing her no end, as intended. So I have an Amazon account, and with one click I buy Dog on it, lightweight Californian crime fiction with a dog called Chet as narrator. Fifteen seconds later my phone zhings and I am reading it. The screen quality is crystal clear. Cost: $9.99.

Next morning I download Kindle to my netbook which promptly syncs with my Android Kindle. I’m no Luddite, nor technophobe, but I am gobsmacked. For many, this is kid stuff. Later in the day I buy Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a donkey in the Cevennes for a mere $2.49.

Meanwhile I’m grappling with my conscience, my scruples, my eclectic ethics, or something deep inside that hasn’t quite come to terms with ebooks.