Neanderpundit

that I might use it to keep blueprints etc. on a small portable device that didn’t take 12 minutes to turn on everytime I use it. I’m still working on making that work.

In the meantime I’m reading at a breakneck pace. Years ago, I took a Developmental Reading course, which lasted ten days. Humans can acquire information much faster than the pace at which they read, and most humans read at about a spoken pace. You can easily train yourself to read very quickly- at one time, I read comfortably a couple thousand words a minute. I still read very quickly, and the Kindle is the first device that I have played with that didn’t take too long to change pages, it switches with only the minutest of delays.

I used to read about a novel length book in a day. That was in addition to everything else. Time and convenience have messed with that some, but the Kindle is bringing my reading speed back a great deal. I finished Monte Cristo in two and days and change, mostly reading in bed before and after work. Of course, it helps that it’s something I want to read; I still cannot read a whole Fanuc manual, or anything by CS Lewis. In fact, I’m a little afraid of even having a Lewis or Rand novel on the kindle, for fear my instinct will take over, and ten words in, throw the Kindle against the wall.

From the table directly behind us.

“Yeah, can I get some of that Shrimp Afraid-o?”

Must be a special left over from Halloween.

I have, all my life, tried to find original, unexpurgated books; the readers digest condensed versions usually don’t do it for me.

Yeah, there are some books that are just too fucking long. “Shogun” would be seven pages without the history lesson, “The Stand” would be fifty pages without the cocaine King jammed up his nose while he was writing it.

One of the books most difficult to find undamaged is The Count of Monte Cristo. And there are good reasons; the book has been hacked up to try to sell it to a younger or possibly more repressed audience. You won’t find the drug use, the treachery, the rape and torture in the commonly available versions, and the book loses a great deal of it’s literary validity because of that. Read the kindle version, if you’ve never had a chance to read it unfucked-with, and you’ll agree: What was an awesome book after it had been hacked to pieces is nothing short of monumental in it’s original form.

Oh, and its free.