Monday 6 August 2012

Reading books on the bus on the phone


Way back in September last year I blogged about what sort of devices people were using to read books on the bus.

A few days ago I had to drop the car off for an oil change, so I caught the bus into work. The thing that struck me was the number of young Asian women (I'd guess the usual Canberra mix of Vietnamese, Chinese and Korean) who were reading books on their smartphones.

It of course makes perfect sense - carry one device, and of course getting books in your preferred language, let's say Chinese for sake of argument, as ebooks means that you can get the latest novel/romance or whatever from an online store without having to trawl round local Chinese language bookstores and wait for them to get a delivery.

It's not just an Asian phenomenon.

J is teaching nineteenth century novels this semester, and was about to berate a girl for fiddling with her phone during a session, thinking that Emily Bronte had been displaced by facebook.

But no, the student said she'd forgotten her version of the text, but she'd found a copy on Project Gutenberg, downloaded it and was now flicking through to find the section under discussion (no page numbers you see ...)

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