If you come to Hay don't bring your Kindle

I don't go anywhere without my Kindle for fear I may have a few minutes spare ...

 

very good!

 

I really like it when the festival is on, nice to see all the little shops so busy!!!

Val

 

I never take my Kindle out with me because i can't read,












and best of all i have not got a Kindle

 

It took me a while to realise what you were all on about, that's how much I care about Kindles

 

Random thought. When people first realised it was easier to use plant based dyes on peeled off bits of bark than it was to chip shapes into stone when they wanted to record something, I wonder if there were people who insisted on sticking with the stone. Then when someone finally invented the concept of the book, I wonder if there were people that insisted on sticking with rolled up scrolls.

In 500 years when archaeologists dig up a book, I wonder if they will call it a book or if they'll call it a primitive kindle.

I like books. As Armandii says, I like the feel of them, the look of them, not so sure about the smell (they often make me sneeze), and I'll be sad when the inevitable day comes when I realise that no shops sell them any more except for obscure little hard to find back street shops run by slightly mad people with massive beards.

But what we like or dislike is barely significant compared to a much more worrying situation that we're already starting to see unfold. Once a book is printed, it can't be changed. It is a record of the facts/ideas/opinions of the author(s) at the time of writing. In the case of fiction the only thing that can really be lost is the art, but in the case of factual content much more can be lost. Let me give an example. When I was a kid there was no internet. If you wanted to research something from history, the usual starting point was either grandparents or the library (usually one would prompt you to seek more detail from the other). You soaked up the experiences of lots of different people and formed a picture based on that. Nowadays you go to Wikipedia, where one person writes their own write-up on a particular topic, then possibly, others read it and sort of say 'yeah, probly sounds about right', and then suddenly it is fact. It then remains fact until somebody else decides it is wrong, and changes it. It means means history can in fact be changed very easily, and I find that quite sad. Thousands of years of cultural and intellectual development has brought us to where we are today, and a generation from now, all because of the demise of paper books to the electonic ether, history from 1900-2013 will read as follows:

1914 - A rock band call Franz Ferdinand gets shot at a gig init so the boyz have a big ruckus init and we battered em like init and four years later they legged it init.

1939 - 1945 - Some little geezer try to nick our turf init so we battered im.

1950 - 1990 or somet - Right, some geezers on one side had a massive rocket, and some geezers on the other side built a bigger rocket and they both tried to put their rockets in space man init, but then they thought maybe stick a pop in the end of the rocket and one geezer said 'you chuck that at us and we'll chuck ours at you init' and they both chickened out.

After that: There was a ruckus at the garage where the oil comes from cos the geezer that's got the oil said we can't have it for our unregistered, untested bikes init, so we battered im init.

So there you go, the future history of a century, after the demise of the printed paper based book.

 

I've never (yet) been to the Hay book festival, but that banner does more to persuade me it's the thing to do, than all the hours of adverts showing people staring at a 6" or 7" screen ever could.

I wish I could see the point of an 'e-reader' ... they're expensive; I can't share them with friends and family, can't pass them on to my elderly neighbour or charity shops; are far more likely to get stolen than a battered paper-back so I can't necessarily leave it on my desk or in my hotel room; don't survive being dropped or laid on during the night; don't react well to rain or sea water; don't have that satisfying feel of a book; the pages don't sound the same as you 'turn' them - books look nice, feel nice, (often) smell nice, they don't need to have their batteries charged. People tell me I can take a whole library away on holiday with me (providing of course, I've also packed the wretched charger thingy too) ... now why would I want to do that? I go on holiday to spend 'quality' time with my family, to see and do new things - why would I want to stare at a screen ignoring what's going on around me and as for '... a whole library', well, I can only read one book at the time and, should I forget my book or inadvertently leave it somewhere, well, I'll go buy another one.

So .. what time's the next train for Hereford?

 

If you were in Court would the judge say "take the Kindle in your hand and swear by Almighty God".............?? is there such a thing as a holy Kindle!!!!

Val