1. The Big
The bookstore is a magical place. For me, a trip to the bookstore is probably like a spa day is to a rich dame. I get there, and it's all *sigh*. Sanctuary. Everything can be fixed here.
I can learn to cook, knit, meditate, and travel right here. Everything I need to know is a book away. I'm reminded of how many things there are to love in this world. How many words I need to read. How many countries to see. How many heart-aches and transformations, the world weeps. I'm surrounded by memory and possibility. Left-over pictures and paragraphs. Remnants of thought, experience. It's days like today, where I have nothing to avoid (DMV or dishes), that I get the most done.
I'm relaxing into life here in San Diego. It's home. I haven't felt like this since Fargo, circa childhood and early adolescence. I have a wandering spirit. A rogue will. I like to strive for the next best thing. The here and now has no hold on me.
I can hear your words now. You'll tell me that that's no way to live. And I know that. That's why I want to say it out loud. Call it like I see it. Don't we all wait for tomorrow? But that's enough of that. I tell my inner nomad. Relax.
I wish I could live moments inside other people. Live their moments for them. Perhaps that's why I love books so much. In fantastical chapters, I'm in South Africa as a dying man; in Pennsylvania as a lonely seamstress; I'm in India, the son of a zookeeper. I'm the world's consciousness. I'm in my living room.
Isn't that why we're here? In cyberspace? To pity and love one another? To read that never-ending reality T.V. show?
2. The Small
I noticed "The Nook" being advertised at Barnes and Noble today. The Nook is the new device where we can all read our fave novels on the small screen. You can buy books like apps. You can read "Crime and Punishment" on your laptop.
And I totally get it. I think in a way it's good because I believe in conservation. And if I have/use a brain, I realize that to make books you have to make paper. You have to shave it from trees, chew it up, and release it into pages. I know that the spines on my bookshelves come from the spines of the forest.
But I think we can also all agree that it's just not the same. Just as we've lost the art of the CD cover, we'll lose the art of the held book. While I don't miss CD jackets so much, I would absolutely miss the colored words on my mantel ledge.
I need the smell of them. I need to turn the page. Not push the button. I need the tangible journey. I need to see the pages I've past to see how far I've come. I need them to pile up. I need to see how far I have yet to go. Electronically, you lose all that. You're just swimming around in book space. You're on a page, but you can't see physically where the end is. There's something to that.
I also secretly believe that people who love those electronic book devices, possibly don't really love books at all. I don't have any basis for this assumption. But there it is.
So I'm thinking we should compromise before we go all e-booking all over the place. How about more books from recycled stuff? Or maybe we could just stop making magazines into pages? I can read mags on the screen, no problem.
But novels need real paper. They need to be quiet, run without batteries. They need to remain unattached to the real world. Like little paper sanctuaries. Mini-revolutionaries protecting us from the buzz and the whirl.
9 comments:
Bookshops are heaven. We don't really have any decent ones over here, though.
Agreed. You can't/shouldn't take your laptop into the bath with you. Also, if you take Crime and Punishment in book form to the coffee house to read, everyone is impressed. If you bring it on your laptop, they think you're just looking at facebook.
I share your love of the written word...the pile of books next to my bed are like the milemarkers on my most recent journey. Love to read your blog... thanks,
dadde
We are definetely a family of readers. I soak it up, even if it is just little tidbits. Nova is already picking up books, she is enthraulled with each of them that we read. It is exciting to watch her get excited about reading. Great Topic!
Don't they have the recycling process down (on paper) now so it doesn't take as many tress as it used to? I'd like to think so!
I would miss books!
I'm in 100% agreement with you.
So many people have asked me if I was going to get a Kindle or the Nook and NO WAY!
There is nothing like the heft of a book in your hands, the smell, the sound of the binding breaking.
I totally agree with the last paragraph!
Man, where did i fall off the bandwagon then? I rarely read, and when I do, i do it very slow, i try to read every word and end up losing concentration,the point of what was going on, or get bored, lose focus and move onto something else. My vocabulary is pretty small. I actually tried to read Robinson Crusoe on my ipod touch a few months back and man I almost felt like i was reading another language, barely understood a thing. Tried 20,000 leagues under the sea, same thing.
Although, on a positive note, I did read one of Nova's books to her when I babysat her and she loved it AND I understood everything! :)
Thanks for commenting. Without a good, intelligent audience everything rings a little hollow, notwithstanding rich dames.
If no one's looking, after reading a particularly good passage, I'll sometimes clutch a book to my chest. That's hard to imagine with an electronic device, but I suppose that's what future generations will do.
Same emotions, but yeah, I prefer the feel of paper, that old musty smell, and the tingle of impending knowledge on the next page, a whisper rather than a click.
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