In recent years, I’ve been reading more and more. A few birthdays ago I was given a Kobo e-book reader; essentially it’s a cheap equivalent of a Kindle.
Initially, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. One of the traditional attractions of reading is the touch of a, hopefully, good book; the smell and the feel somehow add to the experience. There’s always the option of displaying them proudly on a bookcase at home as well, and these attributes will never be replaced.
I was quickly swayed when it comes to e-readers though, and I came to love my pocket-sized device. It held approximately 250 books, all downloaded - allegedly - legitimately for free. It had a built in dictionary, highlighter and even displayed my reading progress in percentages. I found myself reading lots of books I’d never have bought in print, so a massive advantage for me was the endless supply of free e-books available online.
Logistically, whilst travelling throughout India and Asia I could never have carried more than a few books with me. This little baby enabled me to read as much as I could digest on any given subject with no extra weight involved.
I signed up for a Good Reads account; it’s like the social media equivalent of what You Tube is to TV lovers, or what SoundCloud is to music lovers – only for books. I set myself reading target of 25 books for 2014. This would be a personal best, almost doubling last year’s record of 13-ish.
Things were going oh-so well this year for me; I was three or four books ahead of schedule: then I dropped my bloody Kobo. Now the screen is smashed with horizontal lines everywhere I’m thinking my 2014 target’s going to be impossible to reach.
In Changzhou there are no English-language book shops and even if I could get my hands on some hard copies, I’d have no way of taking them home when I leave...
Alas, whilst recovering from the loss of my handiest gadget; I’m trying to beg, steal or borrow any books from anyone in our ex-pat community. It may have all started with an E, but it ended with an F (or a tripple F to be exact): a fatal fudging fall.
And, of course, my ramblings wouldn’t be complete without a tenuous link to a track that inspired my choice of title. Even I was too young for this one; however, this grainy footage is pure gold. Sunrise was the name in original UK raves and this must have been one of the greatest parties of 1989. The track was rehashed I'm sure as I still remember it from the early 90s; this is vintage shizm.