The Patented Electrical Reading Machine & Moustache Waxer

Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Patented Electrical Reading Machine & Moustache Waxer

For Christmas long ago my parents gave me a boy’s book of Robin Hood, and Robin Hood stories read as well in adult life as in boyhood. If I ever lose this Christmas volume I can now call up Sherwood Forest on The Patented Electrical Reading Machine & Hoof Trimmer.

For Christmas this year my daughter gave me an e-reader, hereinafter referred to as the Noodle (the reviews imply that there is little to differ between the Nook and the Kindle), and the gadget appears to live up to its ads.

The Noodle is a little larger than a paperback and about as light. The machine displays a page at a time, and it really is as easy on the eyes as an ink-on-dead-tree page. The typeface can be made larger, and this is certainly a bonus for the optically-challenged among us.

The Noodle comes with a leaflet instead of an instruction book, and getting started is fairly easy. One must register the Noodle with its book chain sponsor, and generate the usual passwords and such, which is only a minor nuisance. Once this is accomplished, using the Noodle is quite easy.

At the foot of the screen is a menu which is relatively easy to navigate although the touch-screen controls are designed for small and nimble fingers. My first attempt to download a book was very slow, but that was on Christmas afternoon when everyone in America who found a Noodle under the tree was doing the same; early the next morning there was no delay at all.

To download a book one must be within what is termed a Wi-Fi hot spot, which is where people with computers gather together to ignore each other. However, since the book is stored within the electrical brain of the machine, one needn’t be near civilization at all in order to read it.

E-books are cheaper than dead-tree books, and the catalogue of new books is the same as one would find on display at the bookstore. Besides new books, though, the Noodle offers thousands of more obscure books (“many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore”) not otherwise available, and many of these are free. I downloaded some ten out-of-copyright books by G. K. Chesterton without any cost at all.

For my Noodle I bought a cover made of imitation Italian leather. I wish I had bought one made from a real Italian instead of an imitation Italian; the imitation leather is a bit greasy-finger-printy. However, it does hold the Noodle securely, making a drop less likely, and provides some padding. The cover also has convenient pockets inside.

Advantages of a Patented Electrical Reading Machine:

1. The electric brain stores hundreds and possibly thousands of books (an Agatha Christie takes up much less space than the Douay-Rheims Bible), which is very convenient for travel. Further, shelf space is at a premium even for the settled among us; our old friends need not be crowded out by new purchases.

2. E-books (to go with your e-dog and e-coffee, and e-chair) are cheaper than physical books.

3. You own the books. If the Patented Electrical Reading Machine is lost or stolen or eaten by the family dachshund, the replacement machine need only be re-coded in order to access your portable library.

4. Long battery life, days at least when disconnected from the Wi-Fi.

5. You can subscribe to e-editions numerous newspapers and magazines.

6. Walking around with a Noodle under your arm will make you look both scholarly and tech-y, sort of a cross between Tennyson and Steven Jobs.

Disadvantages of a Patented Electrical Reading Machine:

1. It is a gadget, and will eventually break.

2. It is not a real book; you can’t underline favorite passages or clever repartee, or makes notes on margins or the blank pages. I haven’t yet discovered a quick way of skipping around chapters or short stories, and you can’t work the daily crossword on it.

3. The communications channels are crowded, especially in the evenings, and there can be some delay in accessing and downloading.

4. The Noodle has to be recharged occasionally. You can’t carry spare batteries; everything’s internal. This could be a problem if you join Robin Hood’s men because there are no electrical outlets in Sherwood.

5. The 1984 factor: our successive governments centralize and gather power, and presume even to control electrons and an abstract concept call “airwaves.” Thus, electronic books are far more subject to censorship and destruction than physical ones. In a recent matter one company, learning that it didn’t own copyright permission to sell a certain book, simply made the book disappear from the electronic readers of people who had bought it. A hostile government or individual could just as easily make unwanted electronic books disappear so that Americans wouldn’t get uppity.

6. Maybe you don’t want to look like Tennyson or Steven Jobs.

There is an irony that the great books – and even the frivolous books – of free nations should be available only on contraptions made in a country that has never known an elected government and is at present a giant slave-labor camp. Robin Hood would not approve, but then, perhaps Liu Xiaobo is China’s archer of freedom, and maybe someday we can read about him on a Noodle made in a free country.

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