Roger, like a lot of people this year, got a Kindle for Christmas. For those of you who came in late, Amazon’s Kindle is a hand-held computer that lets you read books on a white screen. It’s roughly the size and thickness of the old Reader’s Digest, with one big difference. It can hold 1,500 full-length, unabridged books, which cost $9.99 each.

I had never pegged Roger as a big reader. The only thing I have ever seen him read are golf magazines, and those have more pictures than a Playboy. And Roger is not on the cutting edge of technology. If I send him an e-mail, it might be a week or two before he gets his wife to boot up the computer and show him for the 15,000th time how to retrieve it. Then he wants her to print it out, which drives Meg crazy.

“Just read it on the computer. We don’t have to print it out.”

“What if I hit the wrong button?”

“It will shatter into a million razor-sharp pieces that will dice you into tiny, perfect squares and burst into flames and burn you to a smoking crisp. That’s where bacon bits come from, tragic computer accidents. It’s hard to believe they let first-graders use them.”