'Daddy?’ says Mara Wilson, cutely and irritatingly. ‘Do you think you could buy me a book?’
"A book?’ says Danny DeVito a.k.a. The Penguin a.k.a Mr Wormwood. ‘What do you want a flaming book for?’
Now at this point Matilda could justifiably inform her father that she didn’t ask for a FLAMING book, she just wants a normal book, but she chooses not to. That’s right kids. Rise above it.
‘To read, Daddy,’ says Matilda, even more cutely. So cutely, in fact, that she might even pronounce it ‘weed’.
‘What's wrong with the telly, for heaven's sake?’ says DDV, who seems to be getting shorter and fatter with every scene. ‘We've got a lovely telly with a twelve-inch screen and now you come asking for a book! You're getting spoiled, my girl!’
But even Mr Wormwood might have bought his daughter a Kindle.
Here’s what I think about Kindles.
Kindles are for morons who can’t read books unless they’re disguised as computer games, which is a bit like being an old man who can’t get an erection unless he’s wearing a nappy, and almost as disturbing.
I already spend 8.5 hours a day on the internet. I don’t want to spend my commute looking at ANOTHER FUCKING COMPUTER SCREEN.
Not. Interested.
So hate me.
They’re green. I get it. But I like books. Especially free books. I stole the True History of the Kelly Gang from the floor of the Odeon in Sheffield. I also stole the True History of the Elephant Man from the bookshelf at a house party while my friends were throwing up over the balcony.
I thought the London Book Project was a FUCKING BRILLIANT IDEA, because it meant strangers were going to be leaving FREE BOOKS on the tube and we’d all discover our new favourite authors and hopefully it wouldn’t just be thousands and thousands of discarded copies of the Girl with the Studded Neckbrace or whatever.
But I’m hardly going to leave my Kindle on the Northern Line now am I? Or maybe I am. Maybe I could go and empty my bank account and spend my money paying a quack surgeon a gigantic amount of money to remove Cheryl Cole’s teeth and replace them with gravel. Because that would be about as sensible and a whole lot more fun.
