I picked up The Time Ships at a used bookstore last week to read on the plane, but discovered in the first few pages that it was a sequel, of sorts, to H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. And I realized that while I certainly knew the story of Wells' novel, I wasn't sure if I had ever read it.

So I downloaded the text from Project Gutenberg and read it on my laptop. Given the current debate over whether a computer screen is a suitable replacement for books, it was an interesting experiment. I opened up the text into BBedit, enlarged the text to a comfortable 14 points, and read away. For a short novel (at 32,600 words, The Time Machine would just be just shy of qualifying for NaNoWriMo) it was a fine reading experience. Of course, it's a lot harder to hold a MacBook Pro in one hand on the El.

And also, given my frustrations with the last few "classics" I've read, I was happy to discover that The Time Machine is a pretty good read.