Reading Rekindled?

Hold on a minute. Be right with you. Won’t be a sec. I’m talking to my Spindle—Super Personalized In Nanosecond Download Literature Express—the latest word in electronic gizmo handheld technology, ordering up what in the old days used to be called a book.

You there?

Can you hear me?

Over!

We’re here, sir, ready and waiting.

Oh.

O.K.

Let me see.

I’d like, um, hmm, what about Great Expectations by, oops, the name escapes me for the moment, the esteemed British author, you know who I mean? you got that? I can have that?

Certainly, sir. Charles Dickens (1812–1870). Simply swipe your credit card.

I can trust you on this?

Explicitly, sir. With every confidence. You have our word.

O.K. Well, here goes nothing. You’re only a virgin once, ha ha! I’m swiping! Here we go! I’ve swiped!

Thank you, sir. Enjoy your book.

What? It’s here? I didn’t hear anything.

Electronic delivery has no need of plop or thud, sir, unless you specifically require that audible satisfaction.

Yeah? So how do I know it’s there?

Would you like me to read it to you, sir?

You can do that? The whole book?

Certainly, sir,

Wait a minute. This is gonna cost me?

The tiniest amount, sir. Barely noticeable. If you’d kindly swipe your card again, sir.

Zip! Done! O.K., let’s hear it.

Male or female, sir?

This is another swipe?

I’m afraid so, sir.

Zip! Male! Get into it!

Youthful or mature, sir?

I beg your pardon?

Unless you’d prefer doddery.

Are you tugging my appendage?

Not at all, sir. Merely attempting to indicate the scope of our service.

So I can have Great Expectations read to me by a hunchbacked Belgian with a speech impediment if such is my leaning, is that what you’re saying?

Hare-lip or cleft-palate, sir?

What about droll albeit sarcastic with just a touch of Scottish burr wearing a tie with red spots?

May we recommend a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches and silk display handkerchief, your choice, patterned or plain?

I can afford that?

Lovely sound of creaking chair in the background, cane or leather, accompanying reverberatory rattle of thinnest china teacup in saucer on table, add to basket? simply swipe.

Wait a minute.

Stop.

Halt.

Hold it right there.

Is there an off button on this gizmo, Mr Spindle?

Whatever for, sir?

I don’t know, I just got this flash, like I was turning a page in a library book where someone seemed to have, I don’t know, sneezed whilst ingesting his or her morning muesli.

Oh yukky, sir, totally unacceptable. Let me assure you, your Spindle wipes hygienically clean with just the merest dab of a damp cloth, should such an occurrence accidentally occur.

Oops, here’s another one—The butler did it! pencilled in on page 4, just as Agatha Christie was getting into her stride.

Relax, sir, the impermeable surface of your Spindle disallows by its very nature any such shenanigans, you can rest easy on that one right there.

Ah, but what’s this? Pressed between the pages of this book—The Poems of Emily Dickinson, I seem to see, a birthday gift, tenderly inscribed—a single red rose.

No sweat, sir, no problem, no trouble at all. We at Spindle can electronically duplicate, faster than you can drop your hat—

Ha!

Gotcha!

Right between the eyes!

I offer you three instances of touching humanity and what do you do, brainless gizmo? but brush them instantly and arrogantly aside.

Fiend!

Heartless monster!

A Frankenstein of the direst kind!

Avaunt!

Be gone!

The book has no need of your calculating ways!

Let the silent eye caress the paper page, reader to writer, in sacred communion, as it always has, as it ever will, never mind acid darkening, insect damage, global warming, the after-next word in undreamt-of gizmology supreme, pshaw! allow us our humanity, please, what else have we got? hand me that book.

Which.

By the way.

You read it here first.