Reading and Technology

I never imagined, when I fell under the spell of the written word in grade school, that I would someday have almost instant access to everything I wanted to read. I say almost because to be able to read that book, or specific article I have in mind, sometimes requires more than a pair of eyes. Let me backtrack a little bit. It has to be said: I've graduated from reading books in print (exclusively) to listening to them on tape. That's how I finished the first volume of Proust's In Search of Lost Time -- listening to ten cassettes while beach-watching in Mazatlan. And I took a liking to audio CDs because I could listen to them while driving around in my car. Once, I took the wrong exit because I got carried away by the speaker's voice reading My Antonia.
But there is another level of reading ability that I haven't quite reached. Because my knowledge of electronic devices is limited (even though I own a laptop and an IPod), and I'm unfamiliar with the peculiar language of instruction manuals, I have little or no desire to download written material from my computer to a printed page. For now, at least, I'm quite happy to enjoy the simple pleasure of reading a book that I can hold in my hand.