I am the proud owner of an Apple iPad given to a select few by our publisher (see, there’s just one reason he won the Admag publisher of the year award!).
I’m not a techno person – I barely manage my trendy cellphone and have to hand everything to Charlene Rolls to set it up and talk me through the obvious. So when I went to swish the iPad under her nose her envy was so profound she refused to even look at it!
Sadly she had to get over that because again she had to do the groundwork and talk me through it. But now I’m hooked – I keep having what I call “iPad moments”. I can’t believe how great it is to read books – I love the library on ibooks and the “new” tag that appears on a book you’ve just bought as it stands in your bookcase.
In fact I love it so much I won’t let anyone open that book until I’m good and ready to read it – the new sign just looks so fabulous! And paging is such fun. I’ve always been one of those sticklers who thought I had to have the hard copy in my hand, of a book or magazine.
But after reading Time and Vanity Fair on my handy little gadget I’m a changed person. I still sit at the breakfast table reading the morning papers but with trusty iPad at hand to make notes, check BBC news and look at the weather reports so I can decide what to wear.
I love reading overseas book reviews, then mailing our book editors to offer to review those books if and when they got them in. Now I just sit on my couch, read the review in my favourite American magazine, reach for my iPad – and voila – I have the book in a matter of minutes!
As I sigh with delight about all its abilities my husband put it all in perspective: Lovely, he said. But does it have a corkscrew?