This book had a long half-life.
You can spend a lot of time on ‘technology’ reading about, well, technology. Lots of talk about how things are different now, hand-wringing about cell phone manners (hot topic 6 years ago), dismay over a generation of texters who are sure to wind up socially inept, and too many others to list. Emily Post has a website now with a whole section on communication and technology, there is a cadre of e-readers where almost none existed a decade ago, and I love streaming videos and using SugarSync or Dropbox to manage my files. The times, they are a-changin’, but really, haven’t they always been?
I’m sure when Gutenberg starting cranking out Bibles in the 1450′s, there may have been a few monks questioning whether they should throw all their efforts into wine production and hang up their quills. It ultimately marked the end of a largely oral tradition, and the beginning of more literate citizens and a wider sharing of knowledge.
In the circles I move in (which are some pretty slow, old circles), there is still a good deal of ‘wow’ factor about technology in general and, ultimately, about how it is ruining everything. I love technology: my computer, my phone, all manner of gadgetry, and I like to have a little skill in using it all. I like servers and facebook equally, but I do not like excel. I embrace this stuff, for the most part, and I seek it out. But I couldn’t see the appeal of e-readers at first.
E-readers seemed silly to me. Why would I carry a device around to read on when I could just carry a book? Four years ago, my neighbor proudly showed me hers and reported something about how long you could read before charging it. WHAT? Why would I carry something around that I had to charge when I could just carry a book? Then came a family car trip down the coast of California a couple of summers ago with a book-eating teenager. I bought him a nook e-reader on the way back home because it was hard to keep him supplied since book stores were so hard to find. An e-reader for him meant that all we needed was a wireless connection and he could buy a new book. He could even stock up and buy two. It was a very worthwhile purchase, especially since we are minimalist at home: we have a limited number of bookshelves and if something comes in, something goes out. We’re not collectors.
I hear some people say they could never give up real books, and some say they would never have them again. I love what other people love about books: the smell, the look, the feel. I like to see them on the shelf, except when they make me feel guilty about not paying attention to them. Trips to the bookstore are an event and an indulgence.
When it comes to ‘books or e-readers’, I don’t see it as a choice: I see it as two different media, and that each serves a slightly different purpose. Some books are just better electronically because you can look up words and footnotes with ease, or highlight and bookmark passages and find them again without a bunch of dog-eared pages and sticky notes. Your Dickens adventure will never be the same in paper once you’ve enjoyed it electronically. You can share your e-books, change the font size or the page color, and read them in bed at night without disturbing your snoozing bed neighbor. Big books are better in bytes. I love my e-reader because I can also watch movies on it. That pushed me over the edge: having a book and movies in one book-sized package was an appealing travel option. Of course, as a gadget lover, I now have a phone that can do all that, but the reader is good for those times I don’t want to bring a phone. Yes, I spend time without my phone, just like in olden tymes.
Then there are beautiful books and reference books. These are books you keep taking off the shelf to look at or conjugate verbs with. An e-book can’t always capture that beauty, yet sometimes it enhances it. It’s my personal preference to have beautiful books in the flesh only. I like to get physical with my reference books, too. Flipping through those pages to find something is just easier to me than trying to search through e-pages. With present technology, I can’t see becoming completely bookless just yet. Years ago, my husband and I had to cut a book in half because, although it was mine and I started reading it first, he began reading it after I read some of it aloud. I had to hurry to the halfway mark and cut the book in half so he could have the first segment and I could have the remainder. It was an 800 page book and he couldn’t wait for me to finish it. This wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun if we’d shared it on an e-reader. Or so I imagine, since this has been my life experience with books. But e-reader kids will have many fond memories of their time spent with a book. Those memories will just be different.
Indeed, times have always been changing, as you say, and people have always been lamenting that. In ancient Greece, Socrates believed written words threatened truth, rhetoric and memory.
Well, written words certainly do/did affect memory! Storytelling is now a rare art form in America. Thanks for reading!
Great post dude. We switched to e-readers because we just didn’t have the space for all the hard copies we had. We started ditching books that were one-time reads, only hanging onto favorites, and going forward we get the vast majority of our novels in e-book format. It’s great when we are both reading the same thing (no cutting things in half!), especially when he was overseas and we didn’t want to double purchase books.
We save our hard copy purchases for pretty books, reference books, informational books that don’t require chronological reading, and comics. While I do purchase a fair number of digital comics I always prefer hard copies, it’s the best way to take in the art and the entirety of the page as it was meant to be read, and I know that my collection now will be read for years to come when the kids are ready to dig their noses into it.
Love the story of cutting the book in half to share with your husband – the only time I recall doing something similar to that was in Europe. Once I’d visited a country, I’d rip its chapter out of my travelogue book to lessen the load in my backpack.
Hmm. An EBook would have been handy back then, eh?
PS: I liked your post –found it through the wordpress writer’s challenge.
Thanks Beth! It’s the first time I’ve taken the challenge and I enjoyed it!
I think you’re onto something with how you can interact with an electronic book. I recoil with horror at the thought of writing in any of my paper books and give people a lot of guff if they return them to me marked or noted… an e-book, there’s not really something there to damage.
Yes, I never marked in my paper books, largely because then you have to shuffle through them. I’m a big fan of ebooks because of the highlight, footnote, and dictionary features.
I bought the erinte collection of books for my kids, and also for my nephews who live in California. The kids’ ages range from 4-10 yrs. old, and all of them enjoy the books. My kids find the books to be funny and fun to read. My husband and I appreciate the creative way that the books reinforce the Armenian language and culture to our kids. Great initiative by the author to capture in story-form what we as Armenian parents have experienced during our youth. As more and more generations of American-Armenians grow farther away from our foreign-born parents’ customs and rituals, these books allow us to bring the concepts back and share the funny anecdotes with our children so that they can continue to exist in their repetoire of the Armenian culture.