On the e-book

This is the age of the e-book, whether that be Nook or Kindle or some other format, the e-book is quickly making huge inroads in the book market. For the first time, major best sellers are now selling more digital versions than paper-print versions. Is this the end of the paper book? I love paper books and probably have between five and six thousand. Some of my favorite and most beloved titles are prominently displayed in my living room where all guests might see them. The traditional paper book platform is so different than the digital platform that all comparisons must be apples to oranges. The e-book is a kind of a ghost, disembodied, phantasmal, incorporeal, non-existent. Without the digital platform of electronics and electricity, it is dead, but if you want to travel to Europe for the summer, and you want to take three hundred books, your only real option is a tablet with e-reader software. Yet, no one has a relationship with their tablet. It is impersonal, identical to all other tablets, cold, digital, icy. So in some respects the tablet with e-reader software is a practical investment for reading in situations where you can’t be near your library–I get that and have a tablet with the appropriate software, and I use it. Nevertheless, there is something about a book, a real book, a paper book with printing and ink and covers. They weigh something, they are solid, you can hold it in your hand, it will take up space in your bag, it will have a history, and it will be unique. Did someone scrawl a dedication in it when they gave it to you for some special occasion? Was it already used and old when it came into your possession? Did you find it abandoned in on a chair in an airport or did you buy it from a random street vendor on a corner in Madrid? Is it part of a special collection that you are rounding up? Books are tactile and create a visual space, which occupies in the mind’s eye of the reader. All different sizes, all different colors, some thick, some thin, some books you can use to prop open a door. They are relics, some sacred, some less so, but relics nonetheless. Each book represents a story, a human story of loss, of shame, of triumph, or heroism, or cowardice, of sacrifice, of wisdom, or justice. Whether it is a slim volume of love poetry that breaks your heart, or a thick tome on human tragedy that drags you through the cathartic agony of failure and redemption, books will move you to think and feel, and as you think and feel you will imbue a volume with your memories and emotions, and every time you see that book, you will remember your reading experience that was unique and will always be linked in your heart to a particular volume. I am not trying to invoke some ideal time in the past when book culture was ideal, nor I am suffering from romantic nostalgia founded on nothing more than an irrational yearning for some golden moment in my own history. Books are handy, uncomplicated, physical, analogue, simple, unambiguous, solid, sturdy, and helpful. Perhaps a happy co-existence of platforms is what we really need.