In my last post I wrote of some reading I'd recently enjoyed and am now impelled add that a good part of the enjoyment came from the fact that I had done it the old-fashioned way: sitting, sometimes reclining, in a comfy chair or on the couch, holding an ancient but ever-marvelous object called a "book."
I point this out because lately every time I go to Amazon.com in search of more such objects, Jeff Bezos tries to sell me something he thinks I'll like a whole lot better. The Kindle, "a wireless reading device," weighs a bit more than half a pound and measures a tad smaller all around than your basic trade paperback. It has a screen, a keyboard, and a button that allows you to move from page to page. The text appears as black on white, and you can change the size but not the font. There is no color capability yet, so forget art books, graphic novels, and Martha Stewart Living.
In short, it's a oversized GameBoy with boring graphics.
The big deal about the Kindle, which some digital gurus have called "the iPod for books," is that it holds up to 200 titles and can deliver The New York Times and other major newspapers, as well as magazines, via a high-speed data network, which is also how you download the books from Amazon's Kindle Store. Reportedly, if you find yourself wide awake at midnight and have nothing to read, you can download Sue Grafton's latest mystery (or any other author's) in less than a minute. And you don't even have to get out of bed to do it.
Given my oft-repeated experiences of running for a plane with a cumbersome bag of books banging against my hip, the Kindle could be the answer to a reader's prayer. Except...
Like all electronic marvels, the price tag for the Kindle and its peripherals is almost as big as the device itself: $399 plus another $100 or so for memory cards, power adapter, reading light, battery, USB cable, and a cover (to protect the screen and to prevent your seatmate from peeking at the racy passages).
Oh, and then there are the costs of the contents, something to consider if, like me, you're fearful of getting marooned on a desert island or in Cleveland. Most books are $9.99 a pop, so if you want to take the full complement, that would be nearly $2,000; The Times will cost you $13.99 a month, almost as much as a month of Sunday editions on the newsstand, not to mention you can't do the crossword puzzle. Such publications as The Atlantic Monthly, Fortune, and Time will run $1.99 a month. Each. Ouch!
For a person who believes a day without reading is a day without sunshine, fresh air, food and drink, it might almost make economic sense. But not to me. Call me a literary Luddite, for I can get neither my head nor my senses around a book that is not a "book" in the traditional form. You may indeed be able to absorb yourself in "Pride and Prejudice" by scrolling and clicking; I prefer the richer experience of settling myself with my gently used copy (hardcover, illustrated) and leafing quietly through the story of Elizabeth Bennet's romance.
I love the look and smell and feel of books, old and new, used and fresh from the book club; I love the seemingly infinite variety of typefaces and the way they subtly enhance the words on the page. I love the color of the paper: whitest white, browned around the edges, speckled with foxing, and (in the case of "Pride and Prejudice") an antique ivory. I love the varicolored bindings and slipcovers on shelves, stacked on the floor, lying on tabletops, arranged spines-up in a wooden crate. I love the inner walls of books I have built in most of the rooms of my house. (The crowded shelves in my bedroom give it an unofficial R-30 rating.) I love the perfume of paper, ink, glue, binding, and---often---the faint whiff of mildew that tantalizes with the hint of an old and wonderful tale to be discovered.
Most of all, I love the feel of a book in my hands, its binding tight from the bookbinders or comfortably loosened by long and familiar use, its weight, the texture of the cover or the slipcover under my fingers. And the pages---oh, the pages, smooth as silk, rough as linen, thin as tissue, thick as parchment! With all the senses engaged the pages become a part of the story, one with it, in a way text on a screen never can.
I remain devoted to this "wireless reading device," this time-honored creation of ink, paper, hardboard, glue, and thread.
Fortunately, I am not alone. Writing of the Kindle a couple of Sundays ago in The New York Times, Randal Stross, who reports on digital matters, contradicted alarmist social scientists who say Americans don't read anymore thus, "The book world has always had an invisible asset thatmakes up for what it lacks in outsize revenue and profits: the passionate attachment that its authors, editors, and most frequent customers have to books themselves."
Epilogue: Coincidentally, in the same edition but in a different section of The Times in which Stross reviewed the Kindle, I found a far more elegant solution to the problem of taking your library on the road, Tom Stoppard's book satchel. The British playwright was photographed with his case crafted in bridle leather by Manhattan luggage maker T. Anthony, purveyor to the carriage and Cunard Line trade.
Slightly larger than a bread box, it holds a small shelf of books.
Said Stoppard: "If I am on a journey where I only have time to read one-and-a-half books, I never know which one-and-a-half I feel like reading. So I bring eight." Me, too.
Yes, you must check it through. No, they don't make them anymore. Sadly.
For a person who believes a day without reading is a day without sunshine, fresh air, food and drink, it might almost make economic sense. But not to me. Call me a literary Luddite, for I can get neither my head nor my senses around a book that is not a "book" in the traditional form. You may indeed be able to absorb yourself in "Pride and Prejudice" by scrolling and clicking; I prefer the richer experience of settling myself with my gently used copy (hardcover, illustrated) and leafing quietly through the story of Elizabeth Bennet's romance.
I love the look and smell and feel of books, old and new, used and fresh from the book club; I love the seemingly infinite variety of typefaces and the way they subtly enhance the words on the page. I love the color of the paper: whitest white, browned around the edges, speckled with foxing, and (in the case of "Pride and Prejudice") an antique ivory. I love the varicolored bindings and slipcovers on shelves, stacked on the floor, lying on tabletops, arranged spines-up in a wooden crate. I love the inner walls of books I have built in most of the rooms of my house. (The crowded shelves in my bedroom give it an unofficial R-30 rating.) I love the perfume of paper, ink, glue, binding, and---often---the faint whiff of mildew that tantalizes with the hint of an old and wonderful tale to be discovered.
Most of all, I love the feel of a book in my hands, its binding tight from the bookbinders or comfortably loosened by long and familiar use, its weight, the texture of the cover or the slipcover under my fingers. And the pages---oh, the pages, smooth as silk, rough as linen, thin as tissue, thick as parchment! With all the senses engaged the pages become a part of the story, one with it, in a way text on a screen never can.
I remain devoted to this "wireless reading device," this time-honored creation of ink, paper, hardboard, glue, and thread.
Fortunately, I am not alone. Writing of the Kindle a couple of Sundays ago in The New York Times, Randal Stross, who reports on digital matters, contradicted alarmist social scientists who say Americans don't read anymore thus, "The book world has always had an invisible asset thatmakes up for what it lacks in outsize revenue and profits: the passionate attachment that its authors, editors, and most frequent customers have to books themselves."
Epilogue: Coincidentally, in the same edition but in a different section of The Times in which Stross reviewed the Kindle, I found a far more elegant solution to the problem of taking your library on the road, Tom Stoppard's book satchel. The British playwright was photographed with his case crafted in bridle leather by Manhattan luggage maker T. Anthony, purveyor to the carriage and Cunard Line trade.
Slightly larger than a bread box, it holds a small shelf of books.
Said Stoppard: "If I am on a journey where I only have time to read one-and-a-half books, I never know which one-and-a-half I feel like reading. So I bring eight." Me, too.
Yes, you must check it through. No, they don't make them anymore. Sadly.
About this week's picture: it was taken in the stacks of the library at Trinity College, Dublin, and appears in "A Glimpse of Erin: Photographs of John Francis McCarthy and Words of Sean O'Casey." An Irish friend tells me it must have been taken before the windows in the stacks were painted black to protect the bindings from sun-fading.
No comments:
Post a Comment