I have become an accidental owner of a Kindle, Amazon.com’s digital reader. I cannot tell you how much it means to me. I look at it every day and smile, for more reasons you could imagine. It’s a world of books at my finger tips. And it’s perfect for someone like me who doesn’t live in one place. It will be in my carry-on or backpack wherever I may be.
The danger is that it might end up becoming the digital version of my old library: Lots of great books I’ll never read. Just the thought of having access to great books may be satisfying enough. Like traveling to the most interesting, beautiful places in the world but never leaving my hotel room. Just being there FEELS better than not being there.
There is some hope though. I have been reading books every day for more than two years now (usually no more than a couple of pages a day, but still…) and I think this trend will continue for some time, as long as I find book that are compelling enough for my short attention span and limited patience.
It wasn’t easy deciding which book should be my first digital purchase. It seemed way more important than I imaged. The FIRST book among MILLIONS. The Mother of All Books. Which writer would get the honor? So many titles, so many varieties… fiction… non-fiction. Which is most beautiful? Smartest? Most profound? Honest? I was thinking way too much about it. I was over- and over-analyzing why I was going to choose this or that title. You’d think I was trying to pick my bible.
Thankfully I heard Christopher Hitchens’ recent interview and I got tempted to buy one of his books on atheism. I’m usually not very cautious and I buy things as soon as I want them. This time I thought I’d better read an excerpt first. So I downloaded the few available pages and I quickly decided that it isn’t for me. First of all, Hitchens was preaching to the converted. I don’t need to read hundreds of pages to be convinced religions are a sham. Plus he has a condescending tone. I guess his writings are good for people who have doubts about god. To me it’s like beating ideas that are already dead.
I put the Kindle aside and focused on finishing books already at hand. In particular I was thoroughly enjoying Stefan Zweig’s 1933 biography Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman. He describes how a spoiled, intellectually lazy but free-spirited 15-year-old girl becomes the victim of circumstance and ultimately loses her head; how she was unprepared to get married and completely incompetent and careless as a queen. And when she finally starts to show maturity and courage, it’s much too late. The French Revolution mercilessly ends her life.
What fascinated me, besides Marie Antoinette’s lively, playful, careless character, was the contrast between women in the position of royalty and the rest of the female population. I still don’t understand how it was that in those days a queen exercised real power — even more than the king himself in the case of Louis XVI — and yet women in general were thought of as inferior and enjoyed few rights.
I don’t understand the social, political, psychological factors that allowed for such a contradiction. As a woman you were condemned to a lesser existence — unless you were queen. Why? Based on what? What was it about royalty that for centuries people set aside their prejudices and accepted domination by women at the highest level but did not take them seriously in the home or society? It’s a mystery to me.
I was half-way through the book when I lost it a couple of weeks ago. I left it on a bus. I don’t think I’ll buy another copy to finish it. But I do recommend it. Details of Marie Antoinette’s life are so interesting, I think any reader would be fascinated, whether you’re interested in history or not. And if you’re into history, noticing the many parallels between the French and Iranian revolutions add to the fascination.
Meanwhile I finally decided what book I would order on my Kindle. Initially I wanted to venture into the vast unknown and try my luck. Eventually though I picked one I knew I would order sooner or later. I clicked on the bookstore link, searched for Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn and downloaded it for a dollar (yes, ONE dollar). It’s the sequel to my favorite book, Tropic of Cancer. Nothing turns me on more than limitless honesty and naked truth these days and right now I don’t know anyone who delivers better than Miller.
