I love books. I could spend hours in a library or bookstore just browsing through one section. I’m not a literary snob. I love Jane Austen, John Irving, and Dr. Suess with equal passion. I’m attracted to cover art as much as the story and I always have to read the first page to decide if it’s worth my time. So in my quests to find treasures, I often find myself buying books more than anything else. I love the rough-edged pages and old, gilt ones, the leather bound poetry books of the late 19th century and the graphic appeal of the mid-20th century illustrations. I love the smell of inked pages and the appeal of fingerprints and personal inscriptions .
No one can deny the importance of books. From the Bible to a bedtime story, they are a part of our identity. There was a point in time when one’s entire education was based on the size of the library of books they acquired. It was a ticket out of oppression and a window to other worlds. Books have been burned in protest and their contents have been the fuel for wars.
So what will become of the book? All across the nation and I’m assuming, the world, little book stores have closed their doors in favor of the big chains like Barnes and Noble and Borders. But how long will these stores be around? Producing books is costly and, to many, wasteful. So with the advent of technology that allows you, for a small fee, to upload a book, magazine, or even a newspaper at home as easily as while flying 15,000 feet in the air, how long before the book as we know it becomes obsolete? Amazon allows you to store your virtual library indefinitely, allowing a lifetime of books to be contained on one small handheld space.
For me nothing will replace the feel of a book in my hands and the satisfaction of seeing the bookmark in the last page read. Whether I race to end of the book or linger on the last few pages I love to look at my books. I’ve kept and collected books that have particularly made an impact on me in hopes of giving them to my girls one day. Sometimes I leave art books laying around in hopes that one of them will start thumbing through it. How many times have you read a book on impulse? What will happen to the spontaneity of reading?
And, truly, is better than having your child pull his favorite book from the shelf yet again revealing pages with worn edges and scribble marks. It draws me back to my own childhood when I open one of my favorites and see the large block print of my name carefully drawn on the front page by my 6-year-old hand. This just doesn’t work on a hard, cold technological tool.
Still, you can’t stop progress. I guess at some point the book itself was a technological revolution. The oral stories became the written word, individual book-making became large scale printing. I know that I will continue to buy books at my local shop, one of the few still thriving, and continue to rescue old books to be preserved. But I know too that eventually the lure of the kindle will win out.
I just hope that there will always be enough room for technology
and tradition in our future.
