Have you ever felt embarrassed pulling out a hard-copy dictionary, in public or presence of nieces or nephews flashing iPad or its equivalent, seeking meaning of a word? Or ever felt uncomfortable reading a hard-copy book while possibly distracted every direction by clicks and ticks and streams of ring tone of latest pop song?
Are book lovers being reduced to outdated or generational-gapped creatures? Is eBook replacing book? Are the awe-inspiring new technologies digitizing and embalming into eBooks the books I so beloved paper and ink such that I can scribble here and there, and retrenching my old beloved dictionary too? What do all these mean? No more conventional writing tools, reading materials or bookshelves?
I love books. I love the new the very old, the smell of both. I have a peculiarly loving affinity for my dictionary. It is pure passion; I owed a lot of my being to my reading, my books; more recently by surfing the net. For many years I carried books, articles and a dictionary in my security bag everywhere I travelled, and I still do but only one book and faithful dictionary. Time is killed unnoticeably quickly.
Years ago when I was reading a book titled “Our Mutual Friend” by Charles Dickens, I remembered having difficulties which took me nearly six months to finish. I found many emotions were simply beautifully written that it was nearly palpable yet uncountable words were new to me; I had no laptop or wireless or 3G mobile then. You see, I have a habit of lingering on interesting or beautiful words or sentences. In 2009, I read Karen Armstrong’s A History of God; to have finished reading the book marked a new milestone in my being; I loved this book. I did a lot of cross-referencing surfing the net with the latter book. It was a book of brief accounts of three major religions which were very new to me. It took me nine months to finish reading the book, but, how can I consider that a long time? While I shall not mentioned too much of the books I read at this time, but from birth till a Mind Past 50, I am and have always been a normal, average person with an average mind.
The tides of wireless and mobile devices came and come, I rode and ride on them. The waves of intense and unabating passion roared and roar, I surfed and surf them. I feel very fortunate to be able to ride on technology and surf on passion to learn, understand and gain insights. I truly consider myself an amateur in books yet to be able to finish Karen Armstrong’s book was not an easy task without the aids of my laptop. All these that culminated writing my thoughts in a blog is a gift of one of human’s better technology in a very healing way for one like me.
Penning off, truly hoping and wishing all in the world a peaceful life!
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