Story of the Day 10/8/2011

Kindles are not Jew friendly.

I don’t mean just Kindle-brand Kindles. I mean electronic books.
This is because we have these things called Shabbat, holidays, etc, when we are not allowed to use them. No electronics, no phone, no computer, no Kindle. So, if your only reading material is a Kindle…..

I realized this early on, and have been telling people for ages that this is why I do not wish to invest in a Kindle. Of course, I really just don’t want to spend the money, but Sabbaths and holidays and the like are my only large blocks of reading time, so why invest in one of those when I could only use it for the few minutes here and there that do not really lend themselves to reading more than the newspaper or a magazine?
It is really nice having an excuse for being cheap.

Of course, despite the anti-Semitic stereotypes, many of my Jewish friends are not all that cheap and have tossed their stacks of dusty books and learned to snuggle up with their Kindles, and one of these friends, last night, at services, after realizing she was going to have nothing to read during the middle of the day, asked to borrow a book.
You know, one of those old fashioned paper and ink things that pre-date Kindles.

Actually, she didn’t ask, at first. Rather she was casting rather hungry looks at the book my daughter had brought with her to synagogue- and I do not mean hungry as a double –entendre, because Yom Kippur had barely started and eating paper hadn’t yet started to seem like a good idea.

I meant hungry as in, “ all I have is a Kindle, what will I read, since it is forbidden!”

Any book. Something with pages and no pixels.

My daughter was reading a book by Alexander McCall Smith, not a title from his most popular series, but one from another series he wrote.

I am not sure exactly how Kindle owners browse.

Okay, I have a vague idea, because I too buy things from Amazon and they let you peek at some pages, before buying, to make sure the book is worth the sight unseen $16, but it is not anything that really compares to browsing through the stacks of books at the bookstore, sitting in the coffee area for 20 minutes while you decide which of the cartload of books you will drag home, and ….so I am not sure how such readers ever really get exposed to all of the great options you find in the stacks at a traditional book store.
At any rate, my friend had never even heard of the series by McCall Smith.

In fact, the first time my friend saw this author’s name was on my daughter’s book, yesterday evening.
“Is it any good?” she asked.
“Yes, but not as good as another series he wrote.” So, today, I brought a copy of the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency for her to read. You know, one of those paper and ink- Jew friendly things called a book.