Penmachine

When my mother was a little girl, she received a copy of the classic children's book Heidi, printed in 1945. This year, she dug that same copy out and gave it to my older daughter M as a Christmas present.

One gift I received this year from my friend Sebastien was an Amazon Kindle e-book reader. You can, of course, get Heidi for it. The two make an interesting contrast:

The chances that my Kindle will still be around and working in 65 years, to give away to a grandchild? Virtually zero, of course.

P.S. I should note that, as public domain works, Heidi and Johanna Spyri's other books are available for free online too. You can put them on your Kindle as plain text files that work just great, instead of spending the $3 for digitally-locked DRM versions.

Labels: books, family, geekery, history, holiday, memories