Kindle, Nook or Book?

I have been looking for a certain book for about a month now. It is available from some online places but at ridiculous prices as it has to be delivered from Canada and for some reason, it is even more expensive to be delivered from UK sites than it is to be delivered from abroad. Like a lot of things in life, it makes no sense whatsoever. Any sites where I have found it at a reasonable price "don't deliver to my current address".

I went to 5 different bookshops and couldn't find it. One particular big chain of book shops who pride themselves in being "Bookselling company of the year" (this was back in 2008 but they do still go on about it a lot) were particularly unhelpful with one sales assistant telling me. "Oh, I didn't know that author wrote more books then the 3 we have in stock". She then disappeared for a full 20 minutes in the back before coming back out to inform me "We don't have it. But you can get it online at various online stores." I already knew I had that option.

So I gave up on bookstores for that particular book and decided that I may have to pay the ridiculous delivery prices. But I wanted to make my feelings known about this and so I emailed the author. I wasn't expecting a reply, I just needed to vent my annoyance. Surprisingly the author emailed me back after 2 days saying she was "sorry" and that it would cost her "about the same amount to get the book sent to me herself" but she "would send me a book template through email which she would sign". She never did do that.

I still really wanted this book though but am too stubborn to pay delivery prices around 3 times more than the actual book itself! It does not cost THAT MUCH to get a book that is 367 pages long to The UK.

I then looked at Kindle prices and then discovered Nook. What the hell is Nook? I had no idea. It's like a kindle apparently. But I always found it weird how you can read from one of those electronic book things. But "book" prices are so cheap to get on these things. Both on Kindle AND Nook. And they obviously don't take up any space. You can store thousands of books on these things. All that reading! So why do I find it so difficult to even think about getting one? Saying that, at the minute, I find it difficult buying just about anything as funds are so short but even if I did have the money-could I bring myself to but one of these "e-books"? If I did buy one of these gadgets then I could buy so so so so many books at around a hundredth of the price. Surely this makes perfect sense the to get one of these?? For the long run?? But I just couldn't shake off the feeling that there is something ever so slightly loathsome about having one. I didn't really know the difference between a kindle and a nook so I looked it up and the following I copy and pasted:-

1. The Kindle is from Amazon while the Nook is from Barnes and Noble
2. The Kindle uses a keyboard for input while the Nook uses a touch screen display
3. The Kindle does not have a micro SD slot like the Nook has
4. The Kindle has an integrated battery while that of the Nook is user replaceable
5. The Kindle lacks the "Lend Me" feature of the Nook

Now a few words stick out like a sore thumb. "keyboard", "screen", "micro SD" and "battery".

All these are now part of reading. That is where technology is going.

I know I sound 90 years old rather than a 30 year old but reading something from one of these things is a shape of things to come in the future. A future where technology will completely take over until there won't even be a need for human existence! Far fetched? Maybe. But it's a step in that direction.

I remember a few months ago when I was in work. It was break time. A girl who started the same time as I did had a kindle. She kept constantly taking about it. Apparently, she had downloaded some books of a popular series that was currently on TV and kept whipping out her kindle at every opportunity. "Ooooh I really do like reading" was a thing she would constantly try to put across.

I had a book in my bag. In all honesty, I actually did feel a bit old fashioned and I didn't want to get it out to read. I always wouldn't take my phone out in front of people too as that is pretty old and doesn't have a widescreen TV or a thing where you can download apps or something that tells you what current temperature it is in Zimbabwe. I didn't know anyone around me who I really wanted to talk to so I took my book out and started to read it.

A couple of minutes later, one of my work colleagues asked me what I was reading. I told her. "May I have a look? It sounds amazing. After you've finished may I borrow it?" Someone else comes in "What you reading mate?" Another person "What book is that?"

See where I am going with this?

The girl was clearly getting annoyed having probably had a lot of books on her kindle yet nobody was taking an interest in what she was reading even though she kept dropping in comments such as "oh that bit wasn't on the TV show" and "oooh yeah this book is really compelling". I was getting annoyed because people weren't letting me read my book in peace but was also pleased with the fact that people I didn't know were talking to me about something I was interested in because they could see what I was reading. A conversation starter.

The same thing happened over the next few days. I finished my book and then started to read another. People again asking about it. It still was pleasing and annoying at the same time-more annoying for the girl as she ended up stopping bringing her kindle in and started bringing in books.

There's something about having a book-an actual real book in my hands that is quite romantic, charming and cool. Reading from an electronic gadget just doesn't have the same feel to it. I understand students who may find it useful to store books that they need for their studies but then they will never go to libraries and study the old fashioned way.Even though I am having trouble getting this book that I cannot find anywhere-it is all part of the charm. When I finally do get it, it will be amazing. Much more of an achievement then just being able to download it to a machine. How dull. How boring. Is society really that spoilt now? Unfortunately, yes it is.

They say "never judge a book by it's cover" but at least books have covers and personally I would rather read from something that has a cover then something that has no cover at all.

Underage girls should NOT dress like this!

Some days ago I read an article in the paper. A picture next to the article was of a female hardly wearing any clothes.

Nothing wrong with that right? Every single newspaper has that...right?

Right. But there was something really disturbing about this particular picture and also what was written by the mother. The fact that the female was 14 years old. The article was an interview with her mother letting her dress that way. Even though she said this:-

"I don't want my daughter to dress like this but feel like I have no choice and on this particular occasion she had manipulated a set of circumstances that made it incredibly difficult for me to put my foot down".

I wasn't sure at first if I should put the following picture up on my blog post but it had been in a national newspaper so here it is:-

She isn't even fully grown for crying out loud.

I'm not a parent. I may never be a parent. I don't know whether I would be a good father if that time ever did come. But I really could not believe what I was reading. This is a 14 year old girl with hardly any clothes on. I'm not saying it is easy to be a good parent and I am not saying I would know what the right thing to say or do would be if my 14 year old daughter dressed like this. But one thing I do know is that there is no way I would actually let my 14 year old daughter go out dressed like that EVER. I would not care about wanting to be cool, I would not feel any pressure and I definitely wouldn't feel like I was manipulated where I couldn't put my foot down. Also I wouldn't care about her thinking I was "prude" and "out of touch with fashion" which is what this mother thought her daughter might feel about her. I would like to think that I would raise my daughter to not want to dress like a slut. Which brings me onto the next bit of the article.

The mother looked on her daughters' social networking accounts after the daughter had "accidentally" left her computer on. Apparently the mother was "horrified" to learn that her daughter was being "slut-shamed". Now I hadn't even heard of the term "slut-shamed" until I carried on reading.

Apparently, it's a "new thing" where anonymous people can go onto some sort of page or website and condemn you for how you look. Yeah I know-fucking crazy. And you won't be surprised to hear that 2 girls have already committed suicide after being "cyber bullied" from this. As stated somewhere on this blog before, I find cyber bullying absolutely unbelievable. If you are the victim of cyber bullying, all you have to do is not look/not care at whatever it is that is written about you. Don't log on and read! Use the internet for the million of other things it's there for.

Anyway, some comments that this 14 year old received that her mother read were "Are you dressing yourself like that so boys will want to sleep with you?", "You think you're sexy but you're just a cheap slut". The girl replied "You don't know me so you can't judge me".

I'm not saying people should be commenting like this-of course they shouldn't. In fact, these kinds of sites should not even exist but the problem is that they do exist. And for a 14 year old girl to dress like this-it's bound to attract negative comments. Only an absolute idiot would say something positive about this dress sense. An idiot or a paedophile. And that's a whole other problem with dressing like this-it will attract paedophiles. One of the reasons I was very wary about posting the picture of her. But as I said, it has been in a national newspaper and I wanted to point out the horror of it, NOT do what the mother is doing and try to understand it.

Understanding it isn't going to repel the sick people that are out there.

Unfortunately with so many disgusting sites that anyone can get access to on the internet, a paedophile can easily get access to her picture and remain anonymous and you would never know who that was unless he attacked her. There was some guy I used to know who went to my college. He used to "joke" about rape and paedophilia quite freely which I found disgusting. He only ever seemed to do it when a couple of his male friends were around. Obviously never when females were around. He was actually a nice guy when females were around. I don't speak to him or look at him ever because of these disgusting remarks that he continually made in the absence of females. Ironically this man went on to become a teacher. At a high school. Even more ironically, this man is now seeing a woman who was a victim herself when she was 14 years old. I wonder if the people who employed this man to be a teacher for children would have employed him if they knew what he used to say? Of course they wouldn't. I wonder if the girl would be with him if she knew some of the utterly sick, disgusting and disturbing things he talked about? Of course she wouldn't. My point with this is that there are an awful lot of things like this not just being said, but actually being done and it's so horrific as things like this ARE happening everywhere. Several cases are on the news right now. And there are so many disgusting people out there-people who you wouldn't expect to be dangerous. But are.

Yes it's difficult for young girls if all their friends dress like this too. It's not easy when pop stars who I have mentioned in my blog before also dress like this and little girls look up to them as their role models. But it does not mean a parent should put up with or let their underage daughter dress like this. It is wrong. This particular girl and her mother apparently both agree that it is a "current teenage phenomenon" to dress like this.

Well if that is the case, then start a new phenomenon and start that by wearing clothes. Make others follow and respect you. You can do this with wearing clothes. And any parent who lets her underage daughter dress like this should be ashamed no matter what the circumstances.