Christmas

I love Christmas.  I don't have many  presents to buy, or lots of food to prepare, so it's always a chance to see people,  overeat, watch telly, go for walks.  Last year was my first Christmas single probably since my teens.  Part way through the year L asked if we could try again, so we're trying again.  In the run-up to Christmas I felt uncertain, I was looking back to last year, and how sad I felt.  And it seemed slightly unreal that he should have come back.  Reconciliation is a hard process for all concerned.  And I'm not sure if you can ever feel it's totally over.  But I've had a lovely Christmas, and am feeling settled and happy, so I hope this positivity will continue long into the new year.

Ebooks

I've just been reading my first ever ebook.  I downloaded Jennifer Egan's Visit from the Goon Squad to my netbook from the public library.  I've got it for 21 days, after which it will dissolve into bits & disappear.  I've almost finished reading it, and have been thinking about the experience of reading electronic versus print.  I found it very easy to read on the netbook.  I read quite quickly & what I hadn't liked about trying an e-reader previously was that not much text is displayed on the screen so you have to keep 'turning the page'.  However I found that hovering my cursor over the down arrow was very simple, and I could whizz through the pages, more easily in fact than holding a book.  However, what I find interesting is that I miss the sense of knowing where I am in a book by looking visually at where the bookmark is in the book.  It's made the story feel a bit disjointed.  The Goon Squad is a series of chapters about a group of people at different times in their lives, and with different narrators, so it is perhaps more difficult to follow than a traditional consecutive narrative.  But I think there is something about the physical sensation of getting through a book that's missing.  Also, I often read in bed, lying on my side with the book resting on the pillow a page at a time.  And I can't do that with the netbook, and I don't think I'd be able to do it easily with an e-reader, because of needing to turn the pages quickly.    The other thing which feels completely counter-intuitive is using electricity to read.   I know I could get some sort of solar recharger (maybe?) for my netbook, but at the moment it draws power ultimately from the national grid, and so seems wasteful.

But it's been a very easy way to get a library book.  And as someone who sometimes reads very quickly, and then forgets to take the books back, it's a good alternative to print, but I wouldn't want it to be the only method of getting books in future.