Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Wired Love: A Romance of Dots and Dashes

A 19-year-old young woman becomes obsessed with chatting electronically with a young man 70+ miles away. Not unlike a zillion young women and men in the 21st century.

 Yet this “online” romance took place in the 1800s!

Nettie is a telegraph operator who dreams of being an author. One day in the course of normal business she receives a message from “C” a telegraph operator in another city. They strike up a “conversation” in Morse Code, and soon become fast electronic friends.

If you’ve ever chatted online over the Internet, you’ll recognize the feeling of excitement Nettie had each morning when getting to chat with her online buddy. Their conversations passed the time and made the job less boring.

And if you’ve ever met someone in real life who you had previously only known online, you’ll also recognize the strange feeling of trying to reconcile the person you had created in your head with the physical being in front of you.

While the story and ensuing romance were somewhat corny toward the end, with the typical “Three’s Company” type misunderstandings threatening to keep Nettie and “C” from being together, I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this book! Mostly because I found it so cool that chatting online is not a new phenomenon.

This book will definitely be of interest to almost anyone who’s ever chatted online, for that very reason.

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