I had a great Father's Day last Sunday, with our small, though extended family sitting down to lunch. Nadia's cousin Bianca was up from Sydney and Elaine joined us too. Lots of good food - I made a cheese fondue and there was also home-made apple crumble and a pesto - which lasted well into the evening. Tom gave me a little tool set contained within in a pouch, courtesy of his school's Father's Day fundraiser. It was a sweet choice and I will try to live up to its use by being more practical. Nadia really surprised me by giving me a Kindle. That's an ebook reader, to the uninitiated.
I have been downloading free ebooks from Amazon, most of which are in the 'public domain'. Some are (now) obscure titles, others quite famous classics. So nestling somewhere side by side in my slim sleeve of plastic are commentaries on Sophocles, fiction by Jules Verne and Mark Twain, The Bible, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and so forth. Are they happy together in their cold e-library? I have no idea, but there is, with a Kindle, the opportunity to plumb the recesses of a vast horde of reading material, a lot of which is no longer available in print.
I am conscious of the need for discernment. I don't want to consume these great works or even collect them. I am aware of the consumerist bug that has bitten all of us and I don't want to fall into that trap here. The Kindle can hold some 3,500 titles. That isn't a challenge or a target. It's nice to know the space is there, but in every megabite is a salutary warning.
