Eliot’s first novel, Adam Bede attempts to capitalize on the success of her short stories, Scenes of Clerical Life, in its small-town ambiance and its interest in the tensions between a notably laid-back, old-fashioned country Anglicanism and newfangled Methodism. The logistics of transportation and storage that have beset me since I moved to France, wouldn’t even have come up, if I’d had a Kindle years ago.Īs for the novel itself, I found it another unlikely page-turner, as Middlemarch is, though not quite so compelling or meaningful. Oy, such a headache: Hapless Hetty Sorrel,Īs seen by English artist John Collier (1850–1934)īut there’s an undeniable ease to clicking a little button to turn the page, to moving the cursor over a word in order to look it up (a dictionary comes with the Kindle, though some of Eliot’s archaisms are too arcane to be included), and above all to storing the entire library of Eliot’s work in a single, lightweight and eminently portable device - which also stores all of the other collected works of dead white people I’d downloaded, for a few bucks. Typographical errors are rife in both the Könemann and the Kindle texts, but such is the nature of modern life, I think, when I can hardly turn to the electronic edition of The New York Times without finding errors of grammar, usage, and spelling on the front page. I’m still getting accustomed to navigating, and I do miss certain features, such as italics, and the copious annotations of the Penguin paperback and the less-extensive notes of the Könemann hardback.

Although I replaced the paperback with a bargain hardback, the Kindle offered an opportunity to resume my reading most efficiently, while also experimenting with the new technology.Īnd as a reading experience, it’s not bad.

When I stumbled across an incredibly cheap paperback copy of Adam Bede for only a dollar, I snatched it up - then left it on a train, just as I was warming to the story. This reflects not only my tastes but also the bargain prices for works in the public domain: current releases by the living cost about $10.Įliot was a timely choice, too, because, having read her Middlemarch years ago and loved it, I’d never read anything else by her. Naturally, I loaded with the complete works of long-dead writers: Shakespeare, Twain, Wharton, Henry James, and George Eliot.

My well-meaning friends Kara and Konrad bought me a Kindle for my birthday, in another of their periodic attempts to shove me deeper into the 21st century.

Bbc adam bede