So. Modern technology...

I mean, it's all well and good.  It's all very convenient having bought the kids a Nook SimpleTouch.  They have reduced the price to under £30.  Sold out at the moment, due to popular demand, since thirty quid for an ereader really is a fantastic bargain.  I was very smug to have got them, and have almost finished knitting rather natty covers (royal blue for C and stripy red and orange for A). 

I was even more smug (if that were possible) when I discovered that our county library service offers loans of ebooks and the Nook is supported.  Very chuffed when I discovered that there are kids books available for loan, so I can download books for free.  Best of all, C seems to equate ereader time with computer time, so thinks that it is a really special treat to be able to read on it.  Everyone's a winner.

However, I can categorically state that it has never, in all of my born days, taken me over 2 hours to open a book.  An actual book, I mean, of course.  It simply requires the use of hands, which I am lucky enough to possess, and a brain, which I used to have before it was entirely destroyed by Adobe Digital Editions and repeated exasperating error messages.  By 7pm, having battled with my computer for nearly two hours, I was close to chucking the Nooks, the computer and myself out of the window.  A book has never really made me feel that way (apart from Middlemarch, but that wasn't because I couldn't open it, but more because I could...)

I am hoping that now I am more conversant with the system and the VERY SPECIFIC ORDER in which things must be done, so that the computer doesn't have a hissy fit in the manner of a particularly highly-strung toddler, it will be easier next time.  I am also hoping that my cortisol levels start to come down to somewhere around normal sometime soon.