Impress your friends – Your biggest eReader problem solved at last
02 Wednesday Oct 2019
Your biggest e-reader problem solved
The Harris Institute for Social and Self-Improvement For Individuals and Teams (HISSIFIT) has been working overtime on solving one of the major techno-problems of our age.
You buy your highly specified Kindle, Nook or other device, load it up with the most brain-stretching literature known to man (or woman).
But despite your highbrow content, for all the world knows you may as well be reading Barbara Cartland.
Why? Because there is no cover!
What is the point of struggling through Proust on the tube, or wrestling with Hawking on the bus, if none of your fellow passengers can be impressed by it?
e-Reader problem solved
Rest easy in your beds. Here at HISSIFIT we are developing the TwoFaced Reader (TM).
One screen faces towards you – the other faces the world.
Why, I hear you ask? Because this second, public screen will display the book’s cover (see illustration) !
And, this is where my techies have surpassed themselves. The cover need not actually reflect your reading matter.
You can now display the artwork of the Oxford University Collected Works of Shakespeare while reading Dan Brown, and no-one need be the wiser.
Or, depending on your social circle, you may wish to load up the cover of the Da Vinci Code while reading Timon of Athens. It’s your call.
Impress your friends
Now, do you see the fiendish cleverness of our technical geeks? I know you’re impressed.
The Two-Nook, we may or may not call it, or Twindle (perhaps) – focus-groups are ongoing – will automatically load a top-quality cover that is commensurate with your ego.
And financial means.
For the entry-level subscription we will send you the cover of the latest Malcolm Gladwell, or Hilary Mantel.
Shell out a few more quid, and your friends will believe you are working your way through the complete works of Byron or Plato.
We update you with new covers at regular intervals. You stipulate your reading pace.
Before long, your friends and colleagues will admire you as a person who not only has exquisite taste but also a remarkably voracious turnover of books.
Cheapskates
For cheapskates, we will also offer a low-tech option:
We post you a weekly set of paper-printed covers that you can blutak to the back of your existing Kindle or Nook.
(The cheap version doesn’t include Cervantes or Tolstoy – we have to draw the line somewhere, you understand).
Tell people what you think