Oh no, I am criticising a classic! The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne

Well this was my first free book downloaded on the Kindle and it has taken me SIX weeks to finish it which is an appalling record.  Admittedly, I have been reading other things too but I really struggled to finish this.

The story is set in 17th century Puritan Boston and deals with the lives of the English immigrants there.  Hester Prynne has been found guilty of having a child out-of-wedlock and is then forced to wear a scarlet letter A (for adulteress) as a sign of her shame.  She also refuses to name the father of her child.  The story  deals with the theme of guilt, sin and repentance and the subsequent treatment by the town’s Puritans of Hester and her daughter Pearl. Hawthorne represents the adulteress Hester as a heroine and this is interesting considering it was written in the 19th century.

Unfortunately this book has the longest opening chapter ever which seems to add absolutely nothing to the plot. When Hester enters the story you become interested imagining this brave woman standing with her baby at the town’s pillory, but this largely fades again as there as so many convoluted descriptions.  I am sure I must be wrong on this, after all it is a classic but I just a bit bored, I am wondering does anyone love this?

Birthday Kindle!

So after one of my previous posts about umming and aahing about a kindle I put it on my birthday list to leave it to chance if it came or not, and it did, courtesy of my generous boyfriend I now have a slinky strangely strokable kindle.  So I have now joined the techno readers and am still in two minds, but am going to give it a go.

I have spent the weekend fiddling about with it and have discovered the following things;

I like the dictionary element because I normally just ignore words I don´t know unless they are essential for the plot

Subscribing to the free kindle books isn´t that great as most of them look rubbish apart from the classics of course, most of which I have already read.

I can download my free version of  Nathaniel Hawthorne´s The Scarlet Letter which seems so far to be full of description and no action.

You can subscribe for my free trial of the Guardian and Observer, hurrah.  I haven´t been able to get hold of these for the last year in Spain so I like this.  In fact you get so much content that I spent most of yesterday reading it.

I can download my new book club book the Orange prize winner, The Song of Achilles, straight away instead of waiting for it to arrive in the post.

Most of the books I actually want to read are much cheaper to buy second-hand rather than on the kindle, so I can´t bring myself to waste money.

My boyfriend is paranoid I will wreck it, so keeps tabs on how I am looking after it, especially on the beach.

My overall thoughts are that  the kindle is good for some ways but I will never completely turn my back on the trusty book and charity shopping for them.  Any advice on great freebies or anything else, would be very welcome!

Me and kindle, but note real book sneaking in there