Bookstores are dying if not already dead. So it was nice to come across this wonderful little hole-in-the-wall vintage book store in Launceston, Tasmania. It’s run by an affable gentleman who told me that most of the books came from estates in and around Tasmania. I found tattered old copies of books gifted to sons and daughters and nieces and nephews. Some were signed and dated as far back as 1912. The place has this really pleasant vibe too; Billie Holiday’s My Man played as I made my way around the store.

…and wondering whether in similar irony, that Abulinix would force me to decide that my entire personality boiled down to neurochemistry, and I only flattered myself in believing that I possessed a free will in need of regular exercise. Then why would I do anything at all? Once you decide you’re only an animal, how do you keep from becoming a vegetable?

I’ve been using the Kindle for about a week now and contrary to what this article says, I actually have been getting a lot of reading done. As much as I love the smell of books and they way they look on my shelf, I’m starting to understand the appeal of an e-reader. For one, it’s eminently portable and since I spend an hour on the tram everyday, the device is starting to seem more and more like a great purchase.

I’d briefly considered getting myself a tablet device but then decided against it because face it, it’s hard to get any real reading done on a device that offers such lively distractions as fart synthesizers and pissed finches.

The reading experience itself is quite non-intrusive; you hardly feel you’re reading on a device that uses electrically charged microcapsules but instead, feels a lot like a book (now and then, I try ‘turning the page’ before realizing a click suffices). The screen contrast makes for pleasant reading and unlike devices with OLED screens, the Kindle works great outdoors.

The firmware however could use a bit of tweaking but for most purposes, is quite intuitive. It also comes with an experimental browser which is pretty useless and by the time it loads a page, I’ve done more on my phone’s browser. One of the great things about Amazon’s Kindle is the brilliant Kindle store (with a catalog of around 670000 books) and while some of the prices do seem a bit much, works out cheaper for me considering I don’t have to shell out for shipping costs.

Frankly, I never thought I’d get an e-reader but one week and 4 books later, I’m glad I did.

[Pic posted on my Flickr account]

What are the things we think of as essential in our lives? The answers could be: our children, a daily walk in the park, a good stiff drink, the reading of books, a job, a vacation, a baseball team, a cigarette, or love. And yet life has a way of making us rethink. Our children move away from home, we move away from our favourite park, the doctor forbids us to drink or smoke, we lose our eyesight, we get fired, there’s no time or money to take a vacation, our baseball team sucks, our heart is broken. At such times our picture of the world hangs crookedly on the wall. Then, if we can manage it, we adapt. And what this shows us is that essence is something deeper than any of that, it’s the thing that gets us through. 

…

But those who do not know who they are, are doomed too: individuals who sacrifice themselves for the sake of pleasing others, comedians who stop telling jokes because they find themselves in a humourless world, serious people who start trying to tell jokes because they fear being thought humourless, people in a new situation, a new relationship, a new university, who act against their natures because they think that’s the way to make things easy for themselves.

Whole societies can lose their way through a process of bad adaptation. Striving to save themselves, they can oppress others. Hoping to defend themselves, they can damage the very liberties they believed to be under attack. Claiming to defend freedom, they can make themselves and others less free. Or, seeking to calm the violent hotheads in their midst, societies can try to appease them, and so give the violent hotheads the notion that their violence and hotheadedness is effective. 

[Tip of the hat to The Mute Oracle and Kalafudra]

• Pick up the nearest book.

• Open to page 123.

• Find the fifth sentence.

• Post the next three sentences.

• Tag five people, and acknowledge the person who tagged you

Page 123 of Atomised has some pretty explicit stuff and since I desperately need the readership of my prepubescent fanbase, I’ve decided to post something a bit more PG13.

Thus Spake Zarathushtra by Friedrich Nietzsche. Yes, I usually am this pretentious.

Here hangs its web: touch it and make it tremble. Here it comes docilely: Welcome tarantula! Your triangle and symbol sit black upon your back; and I know too what sits within your soul.

The profundity got lost somewhere but anyway, there it is.

Most of the people I know have already been tagged so, I’ll just go ahead and acknowledge Rads. Rads is one of those people who never ceases to amaze me. She’s smart, nay brilliant, creative, articulate and probably the coolest mom I know. This is how you acknowledge somebody right?