Why I will probably never own an e-reader.

(You can blame both the spiel and the double whammy!post on Aurora. She started it.)

Don't get me wrong. I can see why e-readers are popular: convenient for traveling and storing multiple (hundreds of) e-books, reduced prices on those e-books, and for those of us in the Northwest (the hippie capital of the country), it's generally a "greener" way to read -- with the added bonus of being sleek and shiny technology. I get why people buy them.

I just don't see myself ever owning one. Can't say for certain, of course, but I have a hard time imagining it. Because the thing is: I like books. I like the musk of the pages (whether old or new), and the texture against my fingers. I like the shape and heft of a book in my hand. I like to underline my favorite passages and write in the margins. There's even something strangely pleasing about certain font types, and the arrangement of words on the page -- particularly when it comes to poetry. I like to look at the covers of books. The old truism about never judging a book by its cover? I do. Always. The cover art of a book is a huge draw to me. It's one of the things I love about aimlessly perusing bookstores -- seeing all the books lined on the shelves, just waiting to be picked up, flipped through, seen and handled in a way that has no equivalent in an e-book. I also like the fact that reading a book is not reading a screen. As someone who works on a computer for eight hours a day, five days a week, I don't want to look at yet another screen to read for pleasure.

And if we want to talk about practicality for a moment, books still one-up e-readers in several ways: I don't have to worry about dropping a book too hard. It's okay if I accidentally spill a drink on it; it might be water-stained afterward, but it will probably still be legible (and even if it's not, I don't have to drop $200 to replace it). A paperback is probably not an object of interest to a thief, and again, if it does get stolen, I can re-buy it for less than $200. A book can last you a lifetime; you can pass it down from one generation to the next (I own an old, musty copy of a Hardy Boys book given to my dad when he turned 10 years old -- there's still a note from his aunt on the front flap). E-readers, like all other forms of technology, will constantly be outdated -- there will always be new versions to buy. Sleek and shiny though they are, they are costly bits of programming that are not made to last.

So, while I hope that people with e-readers enjoy them and use them, I'll stick to my paperbacks with the notes in the margins.

E-Readers are Grey

Oh, books. How can technology be causing people to abandon you? Video games have torn at your fan base, but really, they weren't reading the good ones anyway. Of course, there will be no reference to how much television has diminished the imaginative capacity of the mind. It's too obvious to be worth mentioning.

It is an unfortunate truth that technology has diminished the appreciation of literature in favor of other more controller involved hobbies, yet....Would those who have taken up games have been readers in the first place? I don't know. I have absolutely no idea, but it's a thought. Quite obviously, my stance on books is everyone should and to hell with all other forms of entertainment! Well, perhaps slightly milder.
But only just! The It Crowd and misc. cute iPod apps. have swayed me towards more electronic entertainment than I once partook in.

Which brings us to the new technology that relates to the written word. Well, not NEW, but it's so overwhelmingly in the press it's completely impossible to know that e-readers do not exist. At first, I was absolutely appalled at the idea. How dare anyone lessen the whole idea of a book! How dare they!

Yet, my boyfriend Tyler has a kindle, and reads on it when he probably wouldn't read the physical thing. He says it's more convenient to read in bed and less of a hassle to carry around.

Which is something I don't completely understand because I appreciate the presence of a book....The smell, the texture, the weight, and the way the sunshine reflects off the off white of paper and black ink. Books have made me appreciate the work that goes into fonts and the layout and structure of  a page. If you bother to read the last few pages of plot-less info in a book, you oft times can find a story about the font and who made it.

My opinion on physical books is that books are the equivalent to sunshine. I can read one in a hospital or a terrible storm while I'm stuck in my car, and there's light and happiness!

But then I think of ideas and rationalism... What is a physical book, but an idea? What does it matter what it's read? The idea of the story exists more really than the physical book does. (DOWN WITH EMPIRICISM!!)

Then,  I received one as a gift. A 114$ version of the Kindle. So now I can critique without the pang of guilt that troubles me when I haven't done the opposing!

I like my Kindle a lot. It's pretty durable, and if you buy books from Amazon you can break your Kindle and then re-download those books. Amazon has EXCELLENT customer service if your kindle has any issues. Biggest pro: You can download tons of expired copy righted books for free and read them on your impressive ink technology screen. This, will eventually save me the $114 my family spent on it.

Then you have other ways of procuring books for free (I don't give an opinion either way here), but I think everyone should familiarize themselves with the concept of intellectual property. An interesting article in the rise of e-book pirating can be found HERE.

Yet, you can't lend a physical book out to someone with notes written in them. You can't run your fingers over notes made in book eighty years ago. You can't pass an e-reader down as a beloved family heirloom. I've read several books on my Kindle that I want to show someone a line in or read a page to my family, but it's not worth flipping through a ton of pages. (Though, there's a highlighting tool that I should probably learn to use.) If I read a book on it that I really like, then I want the physical book on my shelf regardless of if it's the same idea. Tamora Pierce's Mastiff is coming out on October 25 and I've already pre-ordered. In hardback. So that way it can stand in a place of pride next to the other dozens of Pierce books I have.

Final Word: 


I like my Kindle, but I prefer paper and glue books. I will appreciate any device that gets literature into more people's hands. Even if that device was a obnoxious man wearing spandex. You give him a book canon and he's my friend.

Yet, if the e-reader is going to put public libraries out of business then I will gladly crunch it under my foot to save ONE library.

Afterthought After the Final Word:

Speaking of book technology, everyone should check out Goodreads.com.