Last year I watched a guy sell my mom a Nook at Barnes & Noble and my stomach flopped like a baby seal trying to eat all of the fish. Making matters worse was the knowledge I was going to have to learn how to use this betrayal to books just so my mom could operate it. As I ranted about how e-readers were viciously spanking the publishing industry, I breezed through the setup and download process. Sure, it was easy, even convenient, but it was still the evil stepchild of paper books and I would not condone this behavior. Two months ago, I graduated from college as an English Literature major and was gifted a Kindle Touch.
There’s a huge part of me that believes rolling with technology is a necessary fact of the times. However, there’s also a part of me that doesn’t want the evolution of books to be affected by any part of this world other than fingertips. A personal relationship with books is irreplaceable. We wear books down with every read, maybe highlighting or folding pages where the author made more sense of an experience than we could hope to articulate. When we’re done with a book, it goes on a shelf or is lent to a friend and becomes a talking point. On my Kindle, I press “Archive” and it goes….somewhere.
I’m not saying digital storage of books or e-readers are a bad thing. There are still ways to lend your books to other users or share your reading status via social networks. While social sharing is optimized, I’m fairly concerned the Kindles and Nooks limit our discussions to “Yeah, I read that too.” Call me old fashioned and send my cat and me to my room with tea, but I’ve longed for a discussion past “It’s good, right?” E-readers have given us the chance to tote entire libraries around the world, but the presence of another screen in front of our faces not only further blocks us from engaging with the people around us in public, but also prevents us from appreciating the work as it was meant to be – printed.
Regardless of the cons, I have found some serious pros to my Kindle. The first book I read, “Kasher in the Rye” by Moshe Kasher. It was not a huge hit by a well known author, but instead a really great memoir by a comedian publishing his first book. I couldn’t find the book in either big city north or south of my home, but lo and behold, the Kindle Store was my saving grace. A lot of out of print books have come into my tiny hands this way. I found myself reading faster on the screen than I seem to while reading in print. At first, I was perturbed by being unable to feel or see how far into a book I was, but the Kindle does a good job with quick access to page numbers. I’ve preferred landscape mode reading as opposed to portrait mode; somehow the format feels more natural.
As for whether or not I’m on board with the e-reading movement, I think I still have a long way to go before I’m convinced books should be completely digitized. I’ve been thrilled to see schools use Kindles and Nooks to promote reading in the classroom. Yet, the feeling of a book’s weight shift from right to left as you finish and being able to physically handle a great work of art doesn’t translate when limited to a screen. I won’t regift my Kindle or quit using it, but I’ll be sure to go to my bookshelf just as often.
Lauren Mack: Co-founder of The Well Written Woman is an aspiring writer, blogger, and overall enthusiast of brainstorms. She is a graduate of Flagler College with a BA in English Literature and has no intentions to teach. Lauren spends a lot of time reading novels and hoping she can one day finish her own. She often wonders how they made blue cheese so delicious. Really, she is just imposing her elitist attitude on everyone. You can find her pennings at her blogand follow her on Twitter.
I work in a library and resisted for a long time the idea of getting an e-reader. I bought a Kindle fire last February and now I hardly want to read a ‘real’ book. I enjoy long books which, by virtue of just so much print fitting on a page, tend to be LARGE. I can have an entire library of my tomes and my hands do not go numb while I sit reading, something that happened to me regularly before. Along with the fact that, when I experience the interminable waiting for a doctor to show up for an appointment, if I am close to finishing the current book I do not have to haul another one with me. Some books I do want in paper; art, do it yourself and cook books just need to be large to be enjoyed and used but for a primarily text style book; give it to me on my e-reader.
I totally agree with finishing a book and auto having another. Good point!
I don’t know that the reading format will preclude a book discussion. Sites like goodreads, and the various book bloggers who cover all kinds of books from science fiction to romance to the great literary classics, all encourage the conversations about books. I’ve seen discussions about what worked for the reader and what didn’t, cover content, self-publishing vs. traditional, common tropes and how authors are playing with them, and so many more. All of these discussions are not limited to readers who only read print.
If anything, digital books make more books available to more people in an extremely convenient (IMO) format. I’ve always been a voracious reader. Ebooks just enable my ability to read, (or purchase) a book while on my lunch break, or while walking, waiting in line, or any other unforseen moment when I have an unclaimed 5 minutes. It feeds my addiction, and complements my love for instant gratification
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Goodreads is awesome. I’m more saying face to face, when both of us have read Kindle versions, a lot of the discussions in my experience stop at, “I read that on my kindle.” But you’re completely right about convenience. Although I’m starting to question this whole convenience leading to overload, haha.
I resisted until I was in an airport and REALLY wanted to read “Bossypants.” I had my iPad thus Kindle…so, I did it. I bought my first ebook. I felt weird. Like I betrayed paper and the feeling of turning pages. Would it be the same? Would I have that feeling I love when I read? I wouldn’t soon find out… Stupid thing didn’t work and I found the book in the airport gift shop area anyway.
I got my money back from Amazon which was cool. I have read books on my iPad since and all is well. I do still love sitting down and curling up with a book.
I don’t have an e-reader and have not yet purchased an e-book , but I’ve downloaded many books in pdf format, mostly for their value to research topics. But, the content of this article and comments leads me to think about the environmental impact of the book publishing industry. I love paper books and have shelves full of them, stacks of them on tables, boxes of them in storage, so I’m seriously considering getting an e-reader of some kind because I’ve run out of book storage space in my tiny house.
Here’s a source of info on the environmental footprint of our beloved paper books:
http://www.ecolibris.net/book_industry_footprint.asp
Hi,
I have a Kindle, and as a book freak, I wasn’t pleased when I realized I needed it. As it happened, I was leaving Europe (France) to live and work in Mayotte, and the air company only allowed me an on-board carry-on weight of 25kg. Not enough to carry my books with me, although I would have loved to be able to tote my 400-or-so kgs of books across the world. So I bought a Kindle – my grandmother had one, so it had to be a Kindle – and re-purchased most of the books I already had to go on the Kindle. I still don’t like it, but I must admit it’s practical. I don’t like holding the device, don’t like the way it feels, don’t like the flash when it changes pages, haven’t learnt how to navigate properly and frankly can’t be bothered, don’t like the way most of the books are full of typos, don’t like blowing PDFs up to three times their size and taking ages to read one page… but without it, I wouldn’t have anything to read. I’m addicted to print – I’ll read the backs of shampoo bottles in the shower, for heaven’s sake – and a Kindle is better than nothing, but I want my books back.