The pleasure of a good read

I'VE RECENTLY been dipping in and out of ebooks, some of the favourites of my bookish youth.

I grew up with the likes of Stevenson and Sabatini and Conan-Doyle. I sailed the seas in the company of Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver, I fought in the French Revolution with Scaramouche, I prowled the squalid streets of Victorian London in the company of Sherlock Holmes and rode into thrilling adventures with the dashing Brigadier Gérard.

And one of the joys of the internet is that I am able to do so again, to my heart's content, with websites like the Gutenberg Project and the Internet Archive Search.

And how do these much-loved classics stack up, today, in our technologically less innocent days? Surprisingly well, all told, is my belief. Oh, of course, I can't approach them with the same thrill of discovery that I once experienced - going to the public library was always something of an adventure for me - goodness knows what sort of treasures I might unearth there!

The one thing that has never left me is the pleasure of reading. And flicking back over these old tomes I'm reminded why I so easily got hooked.

It's a shame that what Stevenson called "the wiser youngsters of today" can't put aside the computer game and the television set and discover for themselves the satisfaction to be got from a thumping good read.