A little off the topic, but not really...

The other day I was stuck somewhere away from home without the book I am currently reading, Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence. It's not that I forgot it, but rather that it was too big and bulky for my bag that day, and besides, I didn't think I'd be in a reading mood.

The thing about moods is that they change, and, more often than not, pop up unexpectedly. That is precisely what happened to me the day I decided to not take my book with me; I felt like reading my book, but it was at home, where I wasn't.

Ever since the idea of e-books was introduced as a serious option, I have had a hostile aversion to it. As I said in a column I wrote recently talking about e-reading, "... the mere mention of e-reading has been something I greet with a big fat X, like the one people make with their fingers to ward off evil." But, like moods change, so do views.

I've been slowly inching toward accepting e-reading as a reading option that exists, not a force that will drive the bound book into extinction. I say option, because the day I was nowhere near the book I was in the mood to read I had my iPod Touch with me. There was also free wifi. So, I went to the apps store and performed a search there for Women in Love. Sure enough, it was available, and for free, no less. So, I downloaded it and passed some time with reading the very thing I wanted to read, in the font I wanted, in the size I wanted.

I can't deny that it was cool to still be able to have something that was nowhere near me, suddenly, with little effort, right at my fingertips. I felt cool, a woman of my time. A woman in love with technology.

After that experience, I decided to just continue reading Women in Love in e-form, because I have yet to read an entire book that way. Also because many believe that this is the way publishers are going, I guess I should get used to it.

Afterall, humans have had to embrace change in order to improve themselves throughout history. Look at it this way: First, it was drawings on cave walls, then it was cuneiform on clay tablets, then it was writing on animal skin, then papyrus... our written mediums have always been changing, and e-reading is just another link in a long chain of innovations for the betterment of how we record and communicate information.

Now I think I'm gonna go e-read. Until next time...