Holidays are when the Kindle really comes into its own. I hardly use it when I am at home, but it's super convenient not to have to load up your suitcase with holiday reading. I have plenty of stuff on mine still to read, but had a hankering for some history stuff this afternoon and was able to visit the kindle store and peruse their wares and ended up buying "Nemesis" by Ian Kershaw. Yeah, just what my holiday needed. A 1000 page book about Hitler.
I actually have this book at home, plus the first volume "Hubris" (which I read years ago), but because it's enormous and hardback it's pretty difficult to read on the tube or bring away on holidays. I slightly baulked at paying for it again, but it was less than a tenner and I thought that at least there was a chance I would actually read it this time. Within minutes I was embroiled in the events in Germany in 1936. How magic and brilliant is that? Not the events in Germany in 1936: I am largely against what the Nazis did - I hate that stuff. But the fact that I can conjure up a massive book and read it immediately even though I am on a beach in Thailand. I love the future. I will love it even more when every book in the world is available, but I think Nemesis should take me a week to read, so the book boffins have some time to sort that out.
Every time I come away on holiday I think about the idea of setting myself up somewhere remote and hot and by the ocean to work rather than holiday. It's really a fantasy idea and it's easy to pretend that somehow I would get lots more done away from the gloom and day to day interruptions of home. There might be something in it, but I am doubtful I will ever actually do it, but with the internet it does become a possibility. For the writing side of my job there is absolutely no requirement to be in London. I could sit on a balcony overlooking the beach, with a man servant to bring me cocktails and noodles and write away to my heart's content. Or watch every episode of "The Lost Islands" on YouTube. I suspect I'd waste just as much time out here as I do in Shepherd's Bush and quickly tire of the peace and quiet. But it might be something worth trying for a few weeks. When you're writing you put yourself in a bit of a prison cell anyway, so the prison cell might as well be pretty and have fresh air. Plus at the moment I am waking up at 5am most mornings, so could probably get enough work done by 10 that I could spend the rest of the day lolling on the beach, reading about Hitler. And I am using lolling in the traditional sense. I wouldn't lol at the stuff Hitler did. Except at the bits where his hubris led to his self-destruction. That guy was a right prick, though he had a nice moustache. And who knows? If not for Hitler, Stalin might have rolled his tanks right through Europe and we might be living in a communist state and just as many people might have died. So if you invent a time machine and decide to travel back to kill Hitler - have a good think about it first. But then give it a crack. What's the worst that could happen?
If you do kill Hitler though you'll also be killing yourself. Because a change in history of that magnitude would ensure that you were never born. And then you wouldn't be able to kill Hitler after all because you wouldn't exist. Best just leave things as they were. For one thing I hate to think of Ian Kershaw having to rewrite these two massive books. It must have taken him ages. Won't someone please think of the historians?
Anyway ebooks are amazing. I like books too, but I have never really understood people who are more attached to a format than the content. Anything that makes information more accessible can only be a good thing. Though there's no control over quality I suppose. The kindle store for example recommended that I would enjoy books by Emma Kennedy and Stewart Lee, but didn't suggest that I might like books by me. It has poor taste, but if you're prepared to search you might find some gold. If you're not prepared to search then the gold
is here.
I was pleased to see that at least my blog is the 13th most popular kindle blog download, though at the moment 123 people are subscribed to it, which I think puts that achievement into some kind of perspective. I am probably not helping matters by giving it out for free here and as a podcast (which will return once the holiday is over - I have to have some limits).
