From today's SMH Heckler.
I CONFESS
: for at least 27 of my almost 33 years, I have been a reader.
There are days when I can barely keep my eyes open because I've been up all night with my nose in a book.
There are days when I read instead of cleaning the house. And I've been known to cancel on friends because I'm close to the end of a novel.
I CONFESS
: for at least 27 of my almost 33 years, I have been a reader.There are days when I can barely keep my eyes open because I've been up all night with my nose in a book.
There are days when I read instead of cleaning the house. And I've been known to cancel on friends because I'm close to the end of a novel.
I'm an addict. So you can understand my horror at hearing all this talk about the demise of the bookselling industry and the death of the book. People are buying online and using e-readers.
It's cheaper, apparently, and you don't even have to leave the house.
Despite the attraction of not leaving the house, I find online shopping unsatisfying. It's not that I lack fingers or a technical brain, but rather that I feel consistently nervous about giving out my credit card details online.
I do not want Amazon to keep a record of what I am reading. I do not want special-offer spam.
And I do not want to wait a week for the next instalment by Alexander McCall Smith to arrive in the post, potentially battered by heavy-handed post people and bad weather.
Besides, I want to hold a product before I spend money on it. I want to measure its size and weight, and I want to test how it feels in my hand. I like to make purchasing decisions with all senses engaged.
This is also how I want to read.
How will my e-book hold the red wine I spilt when I read about the union between Elizabeth and Darcy?
How am I to take my e-reader into the bath? What if it runs out of battery at the beach, or gets sand in it?
I have 20-20 vision and an iPad, but so far combined they don't a reading experience make. Sure, I can consume the story, but the story cannot consume me.
For one thing, my iPad is made of metal and plastic. It absorbs nothing: not coffee, not biscuit crumbs, not the large sigh I let out at the end of a particularly satisfying narrative.
And falling asleep on my iPad, I have discovered, isn't nearly as comfortable as flopping my head into a paperback.
The iPad smells of metal and plastic.
My books smell of wood and ink. I write notes in the margins. I underline things. While I can also do this on my iPad, I cannot capture the feeling that is made obvious by my shaky handwriting and thick red pen.
Books hold the memories we make when we read them, immortalising our experiences within their pages. Without pages, where do the memories go? Facebook?
Faith Sands
See, we have no need to worry about the future of libraries! There will always be people like this in the world!
It's cheaper, apparently, and you don't even have to leave the house.
Despite the attraction of not leaving the house, I find online shopping unsatisfying. It's not that I lack fingers or a technical brain, but rather that I feel consistently nervous about giving out my credit card details online.
I do not want Amazon to keep a record of what I am reading. I do not want special-offer spam.
And I do not want to wait a week for the next instalment by Alexander McCall Smith to arrive in the post, potentially battered by heavy-handed post people and bad weather.
Besides, I want to hold a product before I spend money on it. I want to measure its size and weight, and I want to test how it feels in my hand. I like to make purchasing decisions with all senses engaged.
This is also how I want to read.
How will my e-book hold the red wine I spilt when I read about the union between Elizabeth and Darcy?
How am I to take my e-reader into the bath? What if it runs out of battery at the beach, or gets sand in it?
I have 20-20 vision and an iPad, but so far combined they don't a reading experience make. Sure, I can consume the story, but the story cannot consume me.
For one thing, my iPad is made of metal and plastic. It absorbs nothing: not coffee, not biscuit crumbs, not the large sigh I let out at the end of a particularly satisfying narrative.
And falling asleep on my iPad, I have discovered, isn't nearly as comfortable as flopping my head into a paperback.
The iPad smells of metal and plastic.
My books smell of wood and ink. I write notes in the margins. I underline things. While I can also do this on my iPad, I cannot capture the feeling that is made obvious by my shaky handwriting and thick red pen.
Books hold the memories we make when we read them, immortalising our experiences within their pages. Without pages, where do the memories go? Facebook?
Faith Sands
See, we have no need to worry about the future of libraries! There will always be people like this in the world!
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