Then yesterday, Marianne posted on the topic of bookless libraries and that led to even more thought pour moi. I believe I’ve at least sorted out why I prefer real books to e-books, but because of last week’s post, it extends even further.
Let me start off by saying that I have a Kobo reader, and while I don’t use it all that much, I do find it very convenient for certain things. For travelling, e-readers cannot be beat. The last time I took a plane and tried to read a paper book I quickly gave up. Why? It wasn’t the weight of the book. It was because the rows of seats are so damned close together. Even if the person in front of you has their chair back straight up, you can’t put a book on your lap without looking nearly straight down. After a few minutes, that starts your neck aching. The solution is to hold the book up in front of your face. With a hardcover, that gets difficult because of the weight factor. If the person puts their seat back, the book winds up too close to your face.
And ebook reader solves some of those problems. First, it’s lighter than a hardcover and if you have to read close to your face, you can just change the size of your type. They also can easily be held in one hand, a big plus over nearly any paper book.
But outside of travelling, give me a paper book anytime. I just enjoy the experience of reading better with one in my hands. I don’t think it’s a matter of “it’s what I grew up with so of course I prefer it”, either.
With an ebook, there’s little “soul”. You buy the book, load it onto your reader and that’s it. Unless you pass around your reader, no one else is likely to read it. With a paper book, you can pull it off a shelf at home or in the library (assuming it’s not a newly-purchased book) and there’s some “history” that comes along with it. Perhaps you’ve read it before (that little food stain on page 141) or it may be inscribed by the author or you or someone else (like the volume I wrote about last week). Perhaps it belonged to someone you remember fondly. Maybe it’s from your childhood. You get the idea.
And what about library books? You can see when the book was last taken out, at the very least. If you go back to an old-school library, you might even see the name of the people who’ve read it. That can be a very cool thing to browse. I remember withdrawing a book from the McGill library when I was at school there back in the ’70s and found the last time it had been taken out was nearly 40 years before! That was very cool.
If the internet had been around in those days, I would have looked up that student and found out what became of him.
Try that with an ebook!
