Flatland - Edwin A. Abbott

So I had no interest in reading this book, and really had never heard of it.  But then I bought this app for my iPhone called Classics - it's the full text of about two dozen books, all for 99 cents.  Well, how can you beat that?  Right there on my phone!  I scrolled through them and recognized most of them, and then there was this Flatland.  Interested because it's a "classic" and I'd never heard of it, I decided to give it a whirl.  And it was pretty interesting!

It's essentially the story of a square who lives in a two-dimensional world, and he explains his world to the reader, living in a three dimensional world.  Then he explains how he visited some other worlds, including the three dimensional world.  Essentially, in this flatland world, women are a straight line and men have more than two sides.  The more sides someone has, the higher their social class.  I liked that it was a really very different type of novel told from a very different point of view.

What makes it a classic?  I had no idea, so I googled it.  Of course.  And apparently it was written in 1884 as a satire of Victorian England and its class structure.  And now I can see that.  Plus apparently it's still read for its mathematical parts, talking about sides and angles and things like that.

All in all, it was an interesting read.  I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it.  It got me thinking, though, of electronic readers.  There's the Amazon Kindle, the Barnes & Noble Nook and the Sony Reader that I know of.  And then I saw a guy on the plane last week with one.  Part of why I think I wouldn't like one is that it doesn't feel like holding a book, I wouldn't think.  But the guy on the plane had a leather cover for his...so when the cover was open, it was kind of like a book.  Interesting!  Plus I'm sure that that would help protect it.  And I thought that it must be great for traveling.  I always take books, plural, with me when I travel, and I always have to consider the book's size before I pack it.  With something like that, I would just bring this slim electronic thing and I could have as many books as I wanted.  But the thing that it lacks - well, two things, I think.
1) A book cover...I love reading the back or the book flap, looking at the cover, that kind of thing.
2) The ability to share...Sure, I could lend you my reader, but would I really?  Whereas I'm happy to lend out a book or books for however long.
So, who knows.  It's nothing I need to buy or really want right now, especially with so many books in the bedroom waiting to be read.  But the experience of reading on the iPhone wasn't nearly as...weird or awkward or uncomfortable as I thought.