On the day Independent Booksellers Week begins, I feel I should confess: I've become a Kindle owner. Look, sometimes these things just happen, OK? It's not as if I planned it. I started research for a book about the history of children's literature and was soon faced with a stark choice: disburse money and time I do not have acquiring dozens of early 19th-century tales with titles such as The History Of The Crumbshaw Family and How God Smote Them All, Starting With The Baby, As Painfully As He Could For Bogglingly Minor Transgressions; or download free versions in seconds on to a portable device that would obviate both.
So I bought it for work. But there's been mission creep. I discovered that because you don't need to hold it open, you can easily read during meals (no more wedging of book under plate and destabilising your dinner), while drying your hair/dishes and through many other tediously necessary parts of life. You can read in bed even after your other half has demanded lights out, because it provides its own illumination. And I imagine that if I hadn't long ago stopped using my hands during sex, it would make it even easier to read through that, too.
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