Literature and the Web

My friend and colleague Shelley Ettinger just sent me a link to an article in the Sunday Times (that’s of London, not New York) that tells about how the British Library is making its nineteenth century novels available free through Amazon’s Kindle.

This may come close to sucking me in.  She and I were talking about this last week, about when we were likely to make the move to purchasing an e-reader.  We agreed we were waiting for the prices to come down, and I said I was leaning toward maybe asking my husband and son to go in together to get me a reader  next holiday season, and furthermore that I’d been leaning toward a Sony because it is easier to get the free stuff off the web from Gutenberg and the rest.  I described my dream of walking around with all of George Eliot!  the entire works of Dickens! Trollope’s Palliser novels– all all ALL of them!  in my arms!  It is just mind boggling.

All of  the things that are problematic about technology sort of slide away as I imagine hugging all the Victorian novels at once to my bosom.  Well, read about the British library’s pride in how they are plunging into the future here.