My Conversion To Electronic Books

this image isn't mine

I'm sure the picture above needs no explanation to you as the Amazon Kindle. However I would need to mention to you that I won a free one as part of a school art contest, and I spent pretty much all of yesterday reading my first book on it (a good one too, Carnegie-shortlisted My Sister Lives On The Mantelpiece by Annabel Pitcher, about a boy coping five years after his sister's death). Previously I'd never got the point of the advertising slogans "Lighter than a paperback" (who cares? Paperbacks aren't exactly ten-ton weights) and "Can carry thousands of books" (why would you need to have that many books on you?), but now I see that's not really the point. What is the point is the new generation way of reading, where you press a button to turn a page rather than going through the ordeal of lifting one (OK, a little hyperbole there) and the thrilling, never-disappearing novelty of simply touching a word to have it immediately defined. And there's the excitement of buying your whole bookshelf in one go - next on my list is the Australian outback-set growing-up tale Everybody Jam by Ali Lewis.

- DP :)

P.S. On a similar literary theme, I recently entered a short story competition for 500 word yarns starting with the line "Dad was flabbergasted when I told him the news". The prize is a collection of books and online publication, but we're not allowed to publish entries elsewhere until the winner is announced. So you'll have to wait a month for mine. Sorry about that.