I Love My DSi

I have never been much of a fan of video or computer games although I have been known to play the odd game of Spider or Mah Jong on my laptop when I should have been working on an OU assignment. My husband, on the other hand was a fan from the very start. Yes, he bought a little box of tricks that you connected to your television's aerial socket and spent many hours playing Pong.

As basic home computers, which were really not much more than a vehicle for playing games, appeared he moved on to one of those. The purchase of a cheap book from somewhere enabled him to type in rows and rows of code that when set to run created a basic slot machine programme. I would sit watching television and doing some knitting while my husband would be sat at this basic computer (I think that it was a very early Amstrad) adjusting the code of the slot machine programme with the result that it was so like the real thing (except that you didn't need any money to play it) that even I would occasionally have a go.

Although I have used computers both at work and at home, games have never been a major factor in my using them. So it was a bit of a surprise to me that I even considered purchasing a Nintendo DSi a few months ago and when I actually made the purchase I wasn't that certain that I wasn't making a mistake and it would be a waste of money. I could not have been more wrong.

I bought a couple of games at the time that I purchased the DSi, and I have added a couple more since. My DSi goes everywhere with me. It goes into my handbag when I leave the house for anything more than a trip to the supermarket and has proved very handy when waiting for appointments with my therapist, or other hospital appointments. My most recent purchase was the 100 Classic Book Collection. I usually have a book in my handbag too but that is not necessary any more. And while there are a number of books that I probably will never read amongst the collection, it does include some of my all time favourites. I have started reading The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins.

I first read this book, or at least I was supposed to have read it, when I was 11. It was one of the first books that we had to read for our English classes when I went to secondary school. The book is comprised of a number of narratives written by various characters in the book telling the story of the theft of a diamond (The Moonstone), the mystery about this theft, and the diamond's subsequent rediscovery. It was the first of these narratives that I found so difficult to read and which I sort of skimmed through. I shouldn't have because it is really the most important part of the book. I might not have read the book properly when I was 11, but I did when I was a bit older and it has subsequently joined the list of books that I am happy to read again every couple of years.

Other books in the collection include Little Women (Louisa May Alcott), Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe), Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte), Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte), The Pilgrim's Progress (John Bunyan), most of Dickens' best works, others by George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare, and probably Britain's favourite author, Jane Austen. To have bought all of these books would have cost me a fortune, and would have filled a bookcase. Instead they are contained in little little cartridge less than 2 inches square.

Oh yes. I love my DSi.