Into the future, one slow stumble at a time.

So finally New Zealand has caught up with the rest of the planet, and Whitcoulls has finally released an eBook site. I cannot tell you how exciting this is for Maddie and I, who have been dreaming, drooling, desiring a Kindle ever since we heard the term eBook.
However, Amazon is still pretending NZ doesn't exist, and won't market the very sexy Kindle here, but Whitcoulls does have an alternative for those of us who can't even hope to afford any device that has a little *i* in front of it, the Kobo . In white or black, with a variety of font types and sizes, and 100 free books included (it holds up to a thousand), it's almost as cute as a Kindle, and will set you back $295, a still angst worthy price for those of us with  a lot more sense than cents.
At the moment, as I do with any purchase over three figures, I'm waxing lyrical about how I can't afford it, that I can wait until the price drops or a windfall happens, but once I'm done with that, I'll be wrenching our reluctant, battered credit card from the Mr's wallet, and buying us a Kobo.

Until then, check this out. You can download the eReader application to your computer. Once downloaded you get five books (we got Alice in Wonderland, The Grimm Brothers Fairy Tales, Huckleberry Finn, Bram stokers Dracula, and Sherlock Holmes). Then you can browse other available titles, all ready to download for much less than you would pay for the actual books. The site doesn't have a whole lot yet, but Maddie and I already have our eye on a couple of titles, one of which isn't released physically for another two weeks. They also have  a FREE classics section, where you can download titles like Jane Eyre, Moby Dick, War and Peace, to your PC for FREE! FREE! I downloaded Siddhartha. When you open the book a little book mark will appear showing you where you are up to. It's very cute.