The Sweet Escape

Even if they’re digital, new books have a smell.

I love bookstores, because I love the smell of the paper that books are printed on. I love the stiffness of a new page, an uncracked binding, a smooth, unwrinkled cover. *warm fuzzies* I know book people know what I mean.

Digital books have a different feel. I use the Amazon Kindle app that works with the iPhone. I also use stanza and eReader but I mostly use the Kindle app. I love being able to drag 20 books around with me at a time. I love being able to read while waiting for the oil change, or while eating dinner (if the waitstaff will leave me ALONE. Its like a woman dining alone is the international signal for “she’s lonely, ask her how everything tastes 100 times’) or while taking a bath or—you know. That time when you’re “indisposed”. I wont admit to how many books I packed during my recent move that were in my bathroom. I like to pick up a book and open it to a random chapter and start reading. Even if I’ve read the book 100 times. I digress.

Digital books feel different. Smell different. Okay, not really but figuratively. The thing about Kindle is that there are no page numbers. So you have no idea where you are in the story. You never know when you’re almost done. Until you’re done. See, I have a bad habit of reading the ending first. And then starting at the beginning to see how the author got there. It’s a weird little game that it’s a little harder to play with Kindle. And frankly, it’s given me some great surprises– like at the end of (more…)

A short written for the linebyline prompt community:

I kind of cheated this week. I started this forever ago and abandoned it, and tonight I was looking through some old stuff and it popped up, so I thought I would revise and add to it and try to fit this week’s line in it because– well hell. That is a hard line. So here we go.

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Her eyes slowly adjusted to the pre-dawn darkness and objects about the room started to take shape. Her head shifted slightly toward the source of a mysterious sound in the room, the one that startled her awake and made her heart race. No matter how often this happened, she’d never get used to him being there at random times during the night.

In a few minutes, he would drop his arm from where it was usually slung casually across his forehead, roll over, swing his legs to the floor, and quietly, gently, get out of the bed. She would hear sounds of him padding about the room, barefoot, looking for the clothes he had flung hours earlier in a path to the bed. Then sounds of him putting them on—thick denim being yanked onto muscular, hairy legs, a loud zipper, a button. A shirt being pulled over his head, searching in the dark for the arm holes. Socks, then a dip in the bed as he sat to pull his shoes on. He would pick up his sweatshirt, the one that zipped up the front, and then tiptoe around to her side of the bed, lean down and brush dry, chapped lips across her cheek, tap her rump and whisper ‘thanks’ when her eyes fluttered open briefly. Then he would stealthily move about the house, checking for his wallet, jingling his keys, and walk out. She would hear him test the lock a few times to make sure she was locked inside. He always tested the lock.

[read the rest at the archive]