I went to the coffeehouse with 100 books on my e-reader.
They are mostly classics: Chekhov, Thomas Hardy, Tolstoy, Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Seneca, and other dead writers.
But I went to the coffeehouse not to read the dead but to Catch Up on the Latest Books. New books can’t compete with classics at home. Ergo, I went to the coffeehouse to read the new Ann Packer.
But I couldn’t, because I’d only downloaded the sample.
So I kept scrolling through my library.
There must be a new book on this somewhere. Isn’t that what it’s for? A repository for all the new, hip, great books that win awards or get reviewed in The New Yorker.
Wait, I found a living writer. David Lodge! I abandoned his 1975 academic satire, Changing Places, at Location 2681. (Why can’t they provide a page number?)
The quote below is very funny.
“They aren’t the top ten per cent, stupid, they’re the ten per cent who aren’t worried about it. The point is you can’t have ninety per cent who are less than average.”
The characters are not talking about students’ IQs. They are discussing the size of penises.
Perhaps I’ll get back to this someday, but it’s hardly a new book, is it?
Scroll on!
Lots of free public domain books. Then some twentieth-century books by Angela Huth, Brian Aldiss, Robin Morgan, etc.
And finally I’m into the 21st century with Kelly Link’s new collection of short stories, Get in Trouble, which I’ve already read. (A brilliant book, which I highly recommend for fans of very literary fantasy, SF, and horror.)
And then I find a new book to read! Beverly Lyon Clark’s The Afterlife of LIttle Women, a scholarly study of the history of the reception of Louisa May Alcott’s masterpiece. I read “25%” (why not a page number?) of this fascinating, readable book last winter. Then I forgot I had it. That’s the problem with the e-readers.
And so I was able to read one of the “latest books” on my e-reader after all.
mirabile dictu 
I wonder about why not page numbers too – with my limited experience of readers, it’s a thing I don’t like, alongside the abysmal formatting…
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Yes, it keeps telling us, ‘I AM NOT A REAL BOOK, I AM NOT A REAL BOOK.”:) Sometimes it doesn’t bother me; then I go back to paper for months!
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I read the David Lodge in paperback not ereader. Maybe it’s funnier that way? I snickered all the way through the academic woes of Birmingham vs California.
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It probably is funnier on paper! I’ve loved two of his books and it’s only this e-book that I’ve let go. Perhaps it really is just that I’ve got too many books on the e-reader and forgot about them. I’ve got to put most of them in the “cloud” (whatever the cloud may be)!
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I have only read one David Lodge novel I quite liked it, but really didn’t make me rush out to find more.
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This one seems a little dated to me, but I really loved A Man of Parts, his novel about H. G. Wells.
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I don’t enjoy books as much on e-readers or the Library app on my ipad. I downloaded hundreds of pages or several books to go to LA with and took my ipad. I found I just didn’t like the experience. I could see the page number and turn the pages, but it was not the same. I felt cut off, and agree with SilverSeason that I don’t react as strongly. I suspect I would not remember the book any where near as much. I miss covers, introductions, notes, the sense of presences.
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They have done studies that show people read differently on e-readers! Sometimes I honestly see no difference, but other times I am yearning to get back to paper. If a book is in the public domain, I’ll sometime have it on the e-reader as well as the paper and am always glad to get back to paper.
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