My Odd Neighbour

I MET the guy from the end of my corridor today. Again. He was ranting into his phone about "******* lesbians". Then he KNEW I was downstairs and yet insisted on spitting over the balcony. Which I chose not to take open exception to. But I thought that was a very rude thing to do.

Binky is all up in the air because somebody dipped her I-Phone out of her pocket. Luckily she followed advice and had at least copied a few numbers for safekeeping. Otherwise she wouldn't even have been able to phone me to tell me she was incommunicado. THAT is why she wasn't talking to me. And Penny says she does like me very much "but not in that way" and so romance has withered and died before it even had a chance to get started. Penny is obsessed by some bloke who I'm not entirely sure even knows her. So one day her Dad drove her to his work ~ in order to make some sense of the issue. But on that particular day the guy hadn't come in and I told Penny this was yet another sign that it was not meant to be. (Not that I have a vested interest or anything but of course I do.)

I found my Penguin Book of German Verse for £4.50 ($6.85) from Skoob (only decent 2nd-hand bookshop that I know of in London. It's between SOAS (University of London's Oriental and African Studies Institute) and University College London and so you get loads of brilliant literary and academic texts in there. The other main purveyors of ancient books in London these days appear to be antiquarian booksellers and that's not what I want at all. I buy books for the content. Not the posh paper or binding or the fact that it might just happen to be a first edition.

I nearly spent £20 ($30.44) in Foyles on a gorgeous harback edition of German poetry from the year 1200 to the present day. Then I remembered that downstairs they're selling an e-reader called a "Nook" for £29 ($44.15). So for £9 ($13.70) extra I can get all the out-of-copyright poetry, novels, and foreign language books that my heart could possibly desire. So I asked the staff for advice and they said e-readers are not cross-compatible and that the Kindle, for example can ONLY load stuff from Amazon's official website and that out-of-copyright stuff on Kindle might not necessarily be free. She said it might cost 20p (30c) or something and that I should exercise extreme care in picking an e-reader if I'm primarily interested in old texts in foreign tongues. So I don't know what to do. And I did think the screen on this Nook thing was a bit tiny.

Those e-books really are popular these days. Last week I noticed the woman on the seat in front of me on the bus reading a novel in VIETNAMESE. Well this is (supposedly) the most cosmoplitan city on earth (not to mention Centre of the Universe.) According to official figures, over 300 languages are spoken in London ~ against a mere 200 in New York.

Anyway back to the books. Does anyone know which is the best one to go for? Also you can call me weird but I WOULD like one with a book-sized screen. And can't you get ones that open out like a real book so that languge students like me can read a text in parallel translation? Information and advice would be most gratefully appreciated.