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Books have been my salvation, my entertainment, my schooling.
I learned about death in "Where the Red Fern Grows."
I first read about Sex, Crime and Betrayal in the pages of "The Godfather." My mother handed it to me and said, "There's some pretty adult stuff." She was right.
I learned about politics and the evils of the modern age in "Atlas Shrugged"
I learned faith in the Scriptures and the lost it in the same tomes.
I discovered far away lands both real and imagined.
I found out that robots weren't evil all time while men often were.
Hobbits and Elves and spacemen and monsters invaded my dreams and life was better for it.I devoured authors whole, Bradbury, Asimov, Card, Heinlein, Tolkien all in phases of obsession
I understood conflict, war, peace, need, hunger, insanity, homelessness, anger, through the minds of men and women who lived it, breathed it, watched it, and died from it.
Books taught me everything I really knew through high school until I started living it for myself, but when something came along, I was ready, because I had read it before.
I love the smell of books, the feel of a new binding, the satisfying crack of the back as it opens to your first read. And older gentleman, sitting next to me, commented that I was reading a book that was older than me. and I handed it to him and told him to smell it. It smelled of my grandmother's house where it had lived for 40 years before I got it 25 years ago. I smelled of paper and ink and dust and I knew that my grandmother had read these very same words, this same book had been her hand and the underlining on page 230 was hers. how can you get that on a Nook? or an iPad, or a Kindle.
What do I do with my signed copies now? How do I get an author so autograph his greatest work when all it is is a screen that changes at my whim? how can I pass down a book that made me cry, taught me how to be a man, or helped me recover from my mother's death? via e-mail? What happens to the heirloom bible that sat on my Grandfather's lap as he read to his children, my father, night after night after night?
"Here son," he says as he clicks "send", "I hope you enjoy this file as much as I did." It just doesn't seem right.
I can't carry a trip to Mars or an adventure under the ocean in my back pocket if it cost $500. How is my son going to mark and highlight and share the dog-eared pages where "ass" or "vagina" shows up for the first time and it makes him giggle and stiffen in equal measure?
I know that real books are fading, the culture of reading is slipping away from us. Yes, it is amazing to have 2,039 books at disposal at any moment, but where is the connection, the tangible joy of putting in a bookmark at that cliff-hanger moment and forcing yourself to turn off the lights, not knowing if she lives or dies just one page turn away?
"He raced up the mountain on his stallion and spotted her on the edge of the cliff, urging his valiant steed onward, he leaped from the saddle and reached out for her as she began to fall....." [Bookmark][Close][Save location?][save file?][close][Exit?] doesn't have any sense of future.
The book isn't sitting on your nightstand teasing you with that cafe receipt bookmark. "Read me! it pleads. finally you give in and grab it from the nightstand and flip open and begin one more chapter. Instant on, always ready, a real book. And what happens to the joy of the library, browsing the stacks for hours, finding books that you never knew existed until you realized you had left "Vampires" and entered "Vasectomies" or you realize you have been reading an encyclopedia for an hour and have totally forgotten that you came in to the store for a greeting card and a latte.
I am a romantic when it comes to books, libraries, book stores new and used, and I fear their passing makes us all poorer for their loss.
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I wanted to include a link to every book, a path to every novel, author, or idea here. This post is ripe for more exploration but my time is short tonight and I must post and go.
7 comments:
Great post. I couldn't agree more. I'm also a romantic about books and book stores, and can't imagine having a Kindle, etc.
I understand the nostalgia of books. I feel the same way. But what you have to understand is that the world is already going in that direction. Kids walk around with their faces shoved in some type of digital device all day every day. (I know. I have a 13 and a 9 year old) However, the whole point is to get them to read and any device that makes them read, I'm all for it.
I will probably always buy books. There are somethings that just don't translate well into the digital format for me, like poetry for instance, or graphic novels. But, there is no denying that I've read waaaayyyy more books now that I have a kindle then I ever did before just because of the convenience. I like to read several books at a time spanning different genres. No way could I carry a romance, a sci-fi and a thriller in my bag without developing some sort of long lasting injury.
Oh and FYI, you can totally book mark the naughty bits on a kindle or nook any other e-reader. Also, you don't have to save location etc. You just turn it off and it picks up right where you left it off.
I got an ereader (not a Kindle; I don't like Kindles) for free (not as a present either), so I have one even though I swore up and down that I wouldn't ever get one. It's good for reading things I don't want to own or things I have in PDF and can't stand to read on the monitor. And I read a fair number of computer-related books which become outdated too quickly to own in hard copy. I also agree that, given a choice between kids spending all their time on some portable game system or phone, and kids reading on an ereader, I'll take the latter, grudgingly.
All that said, I wouldn't trade books for any device, and I refuse to buy books for my ereader. I may borrow them or steal them, but I'm not buying them. I just don't like it that much. I do like books that much, and I own way too many (or perhaps not anywhere near enough) and I guess my only consolation from this whole thing is that if no one is buying books, used books will become dirt cheap. And I'm giving my grandkids books in my dotage. I'm saving books for when the Dark Ages come back, and then I'll be rich, I tells ya! Rich!
Now I'm off to a book sale. Not kidding. Gonna save some more books.
I have to agree... there is just something about the feel of a book in your hands... the way it smells, the lure of the pages... I can see the uses of an e-reader, but I'm resisting pretty hard.
I sort of agree with TH... if it gets kids to read anything at all, it's good. But they have to know what a book is, how it feels, what it can represent, etc.
Whenever I can, I'm at my community branch library, browsing books in the naughty or fantasy sections. ;)
@Naughty Lexi, just the fact that you used 'steal' in your description of how you obtain ebooks rubs me wrong. It's never ok to STEAL. When you steal from an author you take money out of their pockets. And when you consider that MOST if not ALL authors in the very near future will be making most of their money from ebook sales, you are single-handedly contributing to the fall of bookstores and libraries in a way that is far WORSE then kindles or nooks. By STEALING ebooks you imply that the author's time and effort are worth nothing. It's just like Napster. You all remember the uproar Napster caused, don't you?
Please, don't steal ebooks. I would rather you not buy the book at all then steal it.
signed,
ebook author
I knew I could count on my friends to have my back on this one. There is something about the culture of books, libraries, physical repositories of so much information. It is, as Lexi puts it, a potential treasure when the power grid goes down and Mad Max begins to rule. Not only will books preserve our cultural heritage, have you ever tried to use a Kindle as a fire starter?
I know I'm romanticizing here but I bet all of use who write our own blogs grew up with a book in our hand, put there by a parent, teacher, librarian, or friend. We found adventure, escape, freedom, liberation, and fair amount of sex, I bet, between the covers.
I'm not going to deny that eBooks are the future. I'm not thrilled with it from one side, but I will go along with the idea that ePrint is the wave of the future an by the time by son hits high school, or hopefully sooner, he will be carrying a web-integrated tablet with all of his textbooks with all the dynamic content the web can offer in a 3 pound satchel instead of the 30 pound monstrosity my daughter carries around.
I know that ebooks have amazing potential for richness and tangential learning. It's no wonder I love the Internet, it's an endless bookstore for browsing, discovery, and new ideas. It would help if I got out of the erotic section once in a while, but if I want to go learn about John Deere tractors and the asbestos mines under Stalin, I can get there in just a few clicks.
I love books, I love reading, and if we all continue to pay for what we get ((sorry, I had to side with TH on this one)), the eBook market will be an amazing place in a few years.
So let's all go out an buy a book, used or new, familiar or freshly found, a political diatribe or a book of poems, or maybe some political poems that help you write a diatribe of your own, I don't care, but get out there, and enjoy a book.
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