The downside of technology or Why sometimes paper books are best

On Saturday night, I was halfway through reading Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday on my e-reader. I'd seen the movie, with Ewan McGregor & Emily Blunt, a couple of weeks ago & thought I'd like to read the book as it's meant to be a little more hard-edged & satirical than the movie, lovely though that was. So, knowing the reservation queue at work was quite long, I bought an e-copy. I turned a page & suddenly the e-reader stopped, the little turning arrows appeared & that was it. I couldn't switch it off, get back to Home, nothing.

I reset it & got back to Home but now I can't access any of my purchased e-books. When I tap on them, I just get a message, ERROR Protected by Digital Rights Management. But I've bought them, I've paid for them, I haven't pinched or pirated them, they belong to me! I can access my free e-books, no problem.

The User Guide's Troubleshooting section doesn't mention this problem. The Sony Australia website was no help. I tried to send a comment but it wouldn't go. I was told I'd used unauthorised symbols although I'd only used the symbols they approved of like. , ! ? I took out all the punctuation but it still wouldn't allow me to send my question. I've found a Sony Reader Forum so I've posted my question there. Fingers crossed.

I've also had a problem with the Sony Reader software on my PC. It won't Sync anymore & Windows just shuts it down. It looks like a Windows problem but Windows doesn't have a solution & I think I'll have to do something called a clean boot &/or uninstall & reinstall Sony Reader which I'm not confident enough to do so I have to wait until my personal IT guru, P, can come over to help me. Fortunately my e-reader has WiFi & I discovered that I could download e-books from some sites directly on to the reader that way without going through Sony Reader. But at the moment, I'm a bit off my e-reader.
Oh, & my printer is also on the blink. Technology is a wonderful thing - when it works.

So, yesterday afternoon, after I'd spent some time trying to sort this out, I decided to give up on the e-world for a while & sat down with Katie Fforde's new book, Recipe for Love. Sometimes, old technology (& a good romance) is bliss.
Although I would quite like to finish reading Salmon Fishing in the Yemen one of these days...

Sorting out the new e-reader... & a bit of a ramble

My faithful e-reader, basic but easy to use, conked out a couple of weeks ago. My friend P thinks it was the CPU as I couldn't access any of the books, all I could see were little grey thumbnails (& the only excuse for grey book covers is Persephone books which these weren't). So, I decided that I would look around for a new e-reader with a few more whiz bang features.

I decided on the new Sony Touch with wi-fi. I won't go through all my struggles with Adobe not talking to the Sony Reader or the number of registration forms I had to fill in for just about every move I made. All I will say is that, after a couple of hours of me talking to the PC & the PC not talking back to me, the Sony Reader miraculously found the e-books I had stored on Adobe & whizzed them across to the Sony Reader & I somehow worked out how to get them on the new reader. Then, I needed a Bex & a good lie down. Just today (because I needed a week's recovery time), I managed to get the free e-books I had stored on my PC onto the reader so I'm feeling quite pleased. I'm not very clever with technology so this is an achievement, believe me!

The Sony Touch is smaller & much lighter than my old e-reader. I'm enjoying the increased functionality. It's much easier to move through a book (now I can type in a page number. Before I could only move through a book by increments of 5%. Awkward but it did wonders for my maths skills). I can bookmark, use the dictionary & I even tried out the wi-fi at work & was able to download a book from our e-library.

I have been reading (Alexandra Harris's excellent biography of Virginia Woolf) & I will be posting a review & a poem over the next couple of days but I need to walk away from the PC for a bit. I've started the next Julia Probyn book by Ann Bridge now that I'm e-able again & it's just as good as the previous books in the series.

I also want to mention a new feature on Blogger. I can now reply directly to a comment rather than my replies being at the bottom of the list. Anyone can reply to a comment of course but when a conversation starts as it sometimes does, it will be easier to keep track.

Some book news to end this ramble. Virago are going to reprint two novels by Angela Thirkell in December. High Rising & Wild Strawberries. I haven't read any Thirkell but I know there are many fans out there. I've always thought I should read Thirkell one day & I have an omnibus on the tbr shelves so I may be inspired this year. I'm sure I'm going to want to buy the Viragos, can't wait to see the covers.

E-Reader

I own half an e-reader! I've been coming around to the idea of an e-reader for a while now. Ever since I realised that lots of the out of print 19th century books I want to read were available as e-books. A lot of them are free as well. My friend P loves new technology but he doesn't read much. He saw this nifty little e-reader for $99 & we decided to buy it. I'll probably end up buying his half once he's finished playing with it & exploring the photo & film options.

My experience so far has been positive. I don't like musty secondhand books so my only options for authors like E M Delafield have been taking a chance on secondhand books from the UK (not much Delafield in secondhand bookshops in Australia) or expensive, unattractive POD editions. I was thrilled to discover the Girlebooks website where I downloaded Delafield's War Workers for free. They have a great range of 18th & 19th century books by women writers available for free. I also downloaded Elizabeth Von Arnim's The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rugen & Anna Katherine Green's The Leavenworth Case.

Then, it was over to the Book Depository where they have thousands of Dodo Press POD books available as free e-books. I now have Wilkie Collins's Rambles Beyond Railways (I'm reading this at the moment), Clement Shorter's Charlotte Bronte & her Circle, Horace Walpole's Historic Doubts (about Richard III), Mamie Dickens's My Father As I Knew Him & Rhoda Broughton's Twilight Stories. These were all PDF files. The reader can also accept EPub files. P says they're easier on the eye & easier to adjust the font to fit the page but I had some trouble with the drag & drop part of the download so I'll need some help with that.

I think I'll enjoy using the e-reader to read those books I can't easily get any other way. If there's a Penguin or OUP edition in print, I think I'd rather have that, even if I have to pay for it. I love the Notes & Introductions that are part of the package with the classics in print.