Although I’m able to turn pages and make good use of my BookChair, there are times that I would rather read on the computer. This is mainly because of neck trouble and trying to learn C++; getting the keyboard out of the way, setting the book on the keyboard table, turning the pages and hoping Dragon doesn’t pick that up, and glancing up and down from the book to the screen make it a little more cumbersome than I would like. I’ve been thinking it would be nice to just vocally switch windows; read the book on the screen, then go into Win32Pad to dictate some code.

It turns out that I can potentially do that now using Amazon’s Kindle for PC application, which is free (with the exception of the books, of course). I hadn’t had very high hopes for the application’s accessibility, considering that Amazon isn’t great with it (see the lack of captioning for Unbox video products). However, it’s actually not that bad. (Better with Vocola commands, which I will create shortly.) While all buttons must be accessed by mouse commands, actually reading isn’t a bad experience at all.

C++ without Fear was not available for Kindle, but C++ Primer Plus was, so I downloaded a free sample to test how Kindle PC would work with Dragon. To open a book, mousegrid to the Home button (yay, verbing nouns) and click it if it’s not already highlighted. Then, by the same method, double click the book icon. The clicking isn’t as tedious as it sounds because the buttons are large; the grid doesn’t require much narrowing. To turn pages, say “Go left” [previous page] or “go right” [next page]. Up and down do the same thing respectively. To turn multiple pages, say “Go <direction> <number>.”

Text is very clear, and there is a button to adjust the font size. There are also a Go To and a Bookmark button, but Kindle PC already saves your last position when you exit, so that you can open the book where you left off. Note that I didn’t say page number — Kindle doesn’t use them. That somewhat disorients me, but for something like a programming text I suppose it would keep me from getting overwhelmed. That is, seeing 20% read looks more encouraging than “Oh god, I have 900 pages left. Dammit I’m slow!”.

At the moment you can’t create notes, unfortunately. (Not that Kindle would be select and say compatible even if you could, but I’m hoping for something that would allow at least partial dictation, a la Foxit. You also can’t copy text, for understandable reasons, but that sucks for a programming book. I do wish there could be a PDF style layout option, by which I mean the possibility of an autoscroll feature. Kindle PC is nowhere near perfect, but it is passable.

I am always more at home in printed English, be it in books or DVDs with the captions on, just because it’s more accessible and expressive and stable. Sometimes, though, it’s more than that. There are times I just need to see printed words in front of my eyes: a kind of silent-printed-English white noise. Spoken English is just so much babble when I’ve been awake for too long, or when I’m well worried about something, or I can’t take the level of screaming swear words going on in other rooms. Glancing over a few words on a page is the equivalent of wearing smooth a worry stone. To do that, I need an excuse — trying to concentrate on the plot of a novel won’t work, because I’m sacrificing the entertainment for the visual/sensory aspect and would need to return to the book later when I actually wanted to read it. Having half registered the story already, I’d feel like I’d already read it even though technically I hadn’t, I’d just run my eyes over it. So, that doesn’t work. What does work, however, is an etymological dictionary.

An etymological dictionary isn’t like your average Webster’s or American Heritage paperback. It doesn’t give you usage or regional notes or tell you what anything means — it tells you all the words that borrowed and branched and blurred to make up a single entry for an English word.Etymological dictionaries tend to be a little pricey since they tend also to be thick and usually hardcover, so about six years ago I bought the first dirt-cheap ex-library copy I could find for 10 bucks.

The one I have is out of print — the older hardcover edition of Origins by Eric Partridge. (The paperback is being reissued on January 4, but it’s expensive: about $60. Try Amazon or ABEBooks. Check your local library for older editions and keep renewing, if you have to.) I don’t know what its merits are compared to other dictionaries, because I haven’t read any other dictionaries like that. I don’t know if any of the entries are definitive; many are annotated with the abbreviation for “possibly.” But it’s pleasantly dizzying, just trying to follow chain after chain of words and to speculate on how it must have happened. Raw poetry, almost.

Even following, though, isn’t required. If you have synesthesia, attach facial expressions or gestures to words, or are adept at creating sound symbolism, just looking down the list is the comfort — something like caffeine, or soft clothes [insert comfort object here].

Fiction, despite being just that, is still one of the most important vehicles for portraying the sheer range of human beings and emotions in the world. Fiction allows us to “meet” people we may never encounter otherwise — including people with various disabilities. By no means is fiction a substitute for actually getting to know somebody, but if it’s done well, it can provide a tentative reflection. Being fiction, however, does not absolve a book for having incredibly stereotyped characters just for the sake of a soap opera plot. This was my problem with Inside Out Girl by Tish Cohen, which purports to “deal with” NVLD (NLD) via a character named Olivia. But it doesn’t deal with it. That would require introducing the fact that NVLD can BE dealt with, which kills the sappy factor.

Now, granted, I haven’t read many love stories, which this also is in part. It may be the law that love stories must be nauseatingly cliched. The rough summary is this: Rachel Berman meets Len Bean and his daughter Olivia on the side of the road, and they decide to date on the spot. Rachel is haunted by Olivia’s fairy-child-like beauty, and the fact that she resembles the daughter with Down Syndrome she gave up. Rachel’s kids are mortified, because Olivia is the most mocked girl in school. But they have to get along, you see, because Len is dying and has granted guardianship of poor, annoying, clueless, helpless Olivia (sarcasm) to Rachel to assuage her guilt, which is apparently a better qualification than being a licensed foster parent devoted to accepting the quirks of kids like Olivia. Olivia’s quirks include talking solely about rats, hanging onto her decomposing gerbil, asking every day if it’s her birthday, wearing inside out clothes, and basically being nothing but her quirks.

Olivia fares much worse in this book than I expected her to, which I could swallow if only it weren’t so obvious that Cohen was tugging her harder than necessary as a token “heartstring.” I don’t mean to say there aren’t children who exhibit all the symptoms Olivia does — like anything else, NVLD varies widely, and that includes the extreme end. However, because the negatives were never balanced with any positives, Olivia seemed a caricature of every possible item on the NVLD checklists, a walking info-dump rather than a fully fleshed person. I believed the way the kids bully her; that was all too real. I wondered, however, if the author weren’t heaping it a little thick; Olivia exists, it seems, only for the bullying scenes. Certain omissions puzzled me.

For example, Olivia was fortunate enough to be diagnosed at 5, receiving a teacher’s aide and extensive role-playing treatment and counseling. She is 10 when we meet her, and 5 years of treatment haven’t made one dent. I’m sorry, but children do grow up and learn a little, even if by sheer trial and error. Plug in a rote action or phrase often enough, and you will eventually sift what works and what doesn’t. Especially with the benefit of private treatment, for god’s sake! And where was this teacher’s aide? I know too well that the worst bullying can be outside school, but there were scenes that this elusive aide could well have prevented. But that would cut the heartstring of lines like, “As she matured, she’d become more and more aware of the trap she was in. No matter how badly she wanted to escape, there was no real way out.” Oh, poor NVLDers! Aren’t we all just rats in a cage pining to be drowned in a bucket. Olivia, poor changeling child, whose eyes change color (I kid you not) must be protected all her days. AUGH. I’m not saying NVLD isn’t rough — I’ve admitted it, here — but jesus.

Also — who is Olivia? We know she likes rats and Lucky Charms, okay. But what does she do in school? Does she like word games? Is she good at reading or spelling bees, the way we’re shown that even Rachel’s son — a frigging minor character — likes to skateboard? We don’t know. Even her favorite band, Aly & AJ, is a pity prop — they sing about bullying, aww. Olivia is never given a frigging BRAIN. Even when she inadvertently saves the day, Rachel thinks, “Throwing her a party for being a hero was having no more impact than ironing her T-shirts.” So EXPLAIN it to her, then, and show her that one of her weaknesses turned out to be a strength. But no; Rachel just pats her head and pretends it’s her birthday (since apparently no one taught the child how a calendar works! Yes, Ms. Cohen, we do eventually remember our own birthdays.).

Because of sappy romances, we get book review comments like this — “The worst thing that can happen to a family is to be told a child has a learning disability. No, wait. It’s to lose one of the parents. No, wait. There is still one more disaster to hit the Bean family, but that comes later in the story.” Disaster, my arse. Difficult? Absolutely. Disastrous dumb rats? NO. For all Tish Cohen dedicated the book to a real girl with NVLD, Olivia the fairy child is unfairly doomed. The review in question can be found at http://www.bloggernews.net/116718. Cohen’s blog — better written than this book, which is kind of sad — can be found at http://blog.tishcohen.com