Words and things

If life can be described as the process of making peace with things once considered unpleasant...

If life can be described as the process of making peace with things once considered unpleasant, it shouldn8217;t have come as a surprise that one day I looked down at my BlackBerry only to find Ian McEwan. The English novelist, best known for Atonement, wasn8217;t there in any corporeal sense, but rather in a literary one through another of his novels, Amsterdam. Contrary to all of my previous expectations, not only was I reading the novel on my cellphone, I was enjoying it, too.

In fairness, it wasn8217;t a cellphone8230; but a BlackBerry with a built-in phone8230; I had heard reports that Japanese commuters were using cellphones to read books. But I figured that was sort of the thing only Japanese commuters would ever see fit to do.

But once you8217;ve experienced its great rush of convenience, choice and portability, you just have to have more. Actually, the logic of reading a book on a BlackBerry8230; is pretty straightforward: You have the thing with you, so you might as well make the most of it. And it8217;s not what you8217;re thinking. Your thumb doesn8217;t fall off turning teeny-tiny digital pages thousands of times8230; The device cradles in your palm and shows you a few dozen words at a time. By default, your thumb is resting on the keyboard and you simply nudge the space bar to move on8230; You quickly stop thinking about it as turning pages and more as taking another effortless step down a path.

The biggest drawback to the experience involves the sheer proximity of the internet and the constant temptation it provides for the aforementioned thumb to wander away from the realm of timeless literary art8230; You can try any of this yourself at virtually no cost. The software you need is free and versions are available for most of the popular mobile devices. Do a web search for 8220;e-books8221; and you8217;ll get pointed in the right direction.The book business is no longer booming. Who knows if that will ever change back, attention spans being what they are today. As far as digital reading goes, I hope things stop with cellphones, because there is such a thing as too much progress. If I ever start rhapsodizing about Anna Karenina on my wristwatch, please just throw me under a train.

Excerpted from an article by Lee Gomes in the Wall Street Journal, April 16