Reading Material

I read myself to sleep last night. No big deal; I do it most nights. But I was considering what I had read and found it to be less than challenging. I do like our library, but the last few times I’ve looked for something grand to read in the abbreviated New Books section, I’ve come away with nothing at all. That puts me into the ‘stacks’ to find my reading material and I can only wander clumsily through the rows of books, my head turned sideways to catch a title that might stop me. The two rows above my eye level and the three rows below are virgin territory. I never hunt there.

Invariably, when I do find a title I like, it’s a modern thriller. I fall for them every time and then I’m disappointed when I realize that the author was really writing for a movie producer and not for me. The chase scenes, the guns and explosions are all meant for the big screen; not my living room.

With thousands of books upon the shelves, the problem lies with me and not the library. With my personality type, (INFP) I depend on my Intuition far too much and so I don’t look for a favorite author by name. I rarely ever look at the card catalogs. In my ideal library, the books would all be cover outwards so that I could browse and choose by the cover art. Dewey Decimal System? What a bore! The old saying, “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” Hogwash! Of course you can.

That made me think; what if Amazon.com were to sell its sales tools to the libraries? I could go-online, log in to my library account and then check to see if I had any overdue books. Pay my fines with my Visa account. At the same time, I would see some pop-ups with book titles, all recommended especially for me of course. Clicking on the title would bring me to a full page of information about the book, including a picture of the all-important cover! There would be a note to tell me that ‘readers who checked out this book, also checked out…’ and I would see a list of books that might interest me. I could check out all the books on-line and then go the library to pick them up. Delivery (and return) by UPS would be optional.

All of these thought about Amazon made me think of Kindle as well. And I wondered if there is a way to mark up the books you read on it? When I read a great book, I want to be able to underline and highlight when I’m moved. Of course I can’t do that with a library book and I’m hesitant to do it with a brand new one that I’ve purchased. Especially if I want to share that book. So far, I’ve been using the small 3M colored adhesive strips to flag a page, but I want to be able to highlight a sentence or a paragraph. And does Kindle allow me to ‘Copy and Paste’? Ideally, you could copy and paste to an e-mail account within the Kindle reader. Or, better yet…post to a blog? OK, Amazon, back to the drawing boards!