flemmings | (no subject)

Still sticking a gingerly toe into the 21st century, I'm now reading my first e-book, borrowed from the library and DLed to my tablet. Aside from the 'Power Is Mine' feel that comes fom mastering some ancient piece of technology, it's not the happiest experience. The app will freeze from time to time, bringing up a logo at the bottom of the page that stops everything from moving, so I have to go to the sidebar and start the story again. At least it's stories and not chapters. But also it's stories about djinn, some set in very uncongenial places, and in my current state of malaise this causes wanhope and fantods. My eyes ache from looking on the white screen, to paraphrase something William Caxton said which I can't find online, which might also be malaise. Can't see this beoming a habit, though it does let me read more authors than before.

Had eyes examined last week and eyes are fine. Saw accountant yesterday and taxes are done. Refund is close to $1000, which might go to a new bike or a new stove, or might be eaten by the dentist whom I see in a week. Or not, since this is the strangulating cough time of year, just the worst time for lying supine with one's mouth open. Maybe I'll just hire someone to wash my kitchen walls and ceiling and how nice that would be.

Periodically I get the hint of a taste or smell- an orange cough drop on Friday, a brief whiff of woodsmoke today- that says maybe, maybe, the senses will return. (Unlike the completely tasteless meal at The Pickle Barrel yesterday, post-accountant, that was very literally nothing at all.) This absence may be why a new stove has priority over a bicycle, because my present one has a perennially lit pilot light- several of them- and I can't smell when one goes out, as they occasionlly do.

ETA: Ahah. "..and forasmuch as in the writing of the same my pen is worn, mine hand weary and not stedfast, mine eye dimmed with overmuch looking on the whit paper, and my courage not so prone and ready to labour as it hath been, and that age creepeth on me daily and feebleth all the body..."

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Incidentally, you may already be aware of this, but the new Melissa Scott Astreiant book, _Point of Sighs_, is just out. I'm not sure whether it'd be available to you as a physical book or as an e-book, but . . .

It seems I preordered it at some forgotten point and it has now shipped. Don't think I could read it as an ebook, given my difficulty in parsing things on a screen.

I want it as a physical book, too. I just couldn't wait for it to be available as one here . . .

Ahahaha ... I'm still a way ways from the e book, though I am listening to an audiobook, for the first time in forever!

Admittedly it isn't something I would normally even pick up ... but it is read by Peter Capaldi in a glorious Scot accent. (The Wasp Factory by Ian Banks - it isn't a happy story but I can get my fix of my favourite of the recent Dr Who's so I'm no really complaining)

I like my physical books too still. Am reading George Eliot's 'Mr Gilfil's Love Story' (even though I swore off reading any more after crying my way through Mill on the Floss) A smaller read and older than I was when I read 'Mill ...' so this time no tears I think. ^_^

I didn't know how much I missed a good old Victorian novel and am relishing all the words! Ahahaha!

Busy is as busy does, this working lark is good, but damn it doesn't leave me much time for aught else.

I have missed folk. I am reading your posts, just not got the energy to comment sometime. *HUGS*

Ebooks do at least have the advantage of being readable when there's no light to read by, as I just discovered. Have never tried an audio book and don't know if they'd work for me, given the trouble I had following lectures at uni. But I'd try Rivers of London in audio, since everyone raves about Kobna Holdbrook-Smith's delivery.

Work is work but does indeed cut into one's time. OTOH ammother of two must be used to that? Good to know you're still reading. Energy will return eventually.