I could have taken the train into Rome and gone to an English-language bookshop - there's even one at the railway station - to buy a copy of Michael Crichton's new novel, Next (HarperCollins, £17.99). But why go to the trouble of spending the whole of Wednesday morning buying a book, when I could just download it now, on Tuesday evening?

Diesel eBooks were offering Next in three formats: I plumped for the Adobe version, since I had Adobe Reader 7, which appeared to exceed the advertised minimum software requirements. So I tapped in my credit card details (only $16! So cheap!), waited for the confirmation email, and went to download the book - at which point a message popped up telling me that a critical component was missing from my Adobe Reader, and that I should 'click here' to download the necessary updates. So I clicked there. Another message popped up telling me that no updates were available. I supposed I'd just have to download Adobe Reader 8. The file is bigger than 20 megabytes; I don't have broadband. It would be quicker to walk to Rome.

LRB 4 January 2007 | PDF Download