Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Mass Transit is Good for Reading, and so is Amazon

I've been taking the bus a lot more lately, and I rode the 250 Express over to a play in Seattle last night. We were stuck in even-worse-than-usual accident-induced traffic, and I had a chance to finish a book. I also noticed that about a third of the other riders were reading. This on a day when a major study came out about how we're reading less. I also talked to two strangers, which is rare. If I'd been stuck in my car I wouldn't have done either.

Also of note - the bus was packed - standing room only. So why did we just vote down a transportation initiative?

Also -- good for Amazon on releasing its new reader, the Kindle. I haven't got mine yet (I probably will, both as a futurist gadget and since I'm a frequent reader out of physical space for books in my office). But that's less tree-cutting, and hopefully it will get used enough to far offset whatever toxic products it puts in the waste stream later. Whether it becomes "the product" we've all been waiting for as far as making electronic fiction reading actually pleasurable or not, it appears to be progress.

Anyway, today will be driving to the beach (but I get to be the passenger), and I'll try and print the summary of the latest IPCC report as car-reading fodder.

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

No comments: