Another device

Since June last year I have re-discovered, and read, loads of Dickens – on my iPhone. Pickwick Papers, Martin Chuzzlewit, Barnaby Rudge, and I’ve just finished Our Mutual Friend. Wow, what a writer. Recently, I also rediscovered the delights of reading Dickens in book form (!). In some great-grand-parental volumes (hardback, two columns per page, two novels per volume, Chapman and Hall Household edition). The Our Mutual Friend volume weights 1.205 kilograms, and needs to be read at a table. My iPhone weighs 134 grams. But it doesn’t have the enthralling pictures – such as the above showing two of the villains (one being killed by the other) at the end of the novel.

Trouble is, in the book, you want to flick forward to see the pictures that are coming up …