Last September, I bought myself an iPad as a birthday present. I quickly amassed a small library and have only read about a dozen printed books since then. Lately, though, I’ve started to wonder if that makes me kind of a traitor. I am, after all, a librarian. We take books very seriously. I take books very seriously. (In fact, the recent news about Timbuktu’s Ahmed Baba Library breaks my heart.) But as I watch the book sale numbers fluctuate, I start to wonder if ebooks really are just the next phase of the book. After all, when I go to the bookstore (print or physical) I don’t really think of it as buying books; I’m buying stories.
Before I made the switch, I made all kinds of arguments about why I preferred printed books to ebooks. It was easier to take notes, I’d say. It was okay to read a printed book in the bath without fear of destroying at least a hundred dollars worth of electronics. A lot of the arguments I made were aesthetic. I liked the smell of a freshly printed book. (Still do.) And I liked the weight of a book. But since I’ve started to read ebooks, I’ve found that I’m actually more likely to mark up a book, because I can just erase my notes and highlights later. I don’t miss the weight or the smell. (Less so lately, since I’ve had the flu and a cold in the last month and haven’t smelled anything properly since before Christmas.) I’ve found that I can read a lot faster with an ebook than a printed one, for some reason.
I’m still edgy about reading in the bath, though.
But I’m starting to think that a lot of the arguments for printed books over ebooks really just have to do with holding up a sacred cow. To me, the book itself was rarely the important thing. As I said, I’m at the bookstores for stories. Sure, I love to see a well preserved incunabula or a rare edition, but those books stand out from the masses of paperbacks and poorly bound hardbacks*.
The things that keep me from advocating more for ebooks is the cost and the legal issues. I’m lucky enough to be able to afford a device, not everyone is. And because ebooks are digital, their use is regulated by licenses rather than traditional copyright law. It frankly pisses me off that I can’t pass my ebooks around like I can my printed books. (I know about LendMe, but that’s a poor substitute.) So, while ebooks might be great for me, as a solo reader, they’re terrible for libraries and used bookstores.
So, am I a traitor? Maybe, but I’m still a reader.
* When I worked for a public library, it wasn’t unusual to see some book spines snap after a couple dozen reads because they were not built to last.
I think as soon as we stop thinking of ourselves traitors, or devotees of form, and really really think of ourselves as readers, all this nonsense about “death of print! death of reading!” will go away. Seriously, think how much actual reading you do, not just novels you consume. If you're at all like me, and I suspect you are, friend ;-), you read hundreds of pages of blogs and articles a month. They aren't lesser creations simply because you access them online.
Although you are bang on about the copyright BS. It's so frustrating to dangle the promise of ebooks to patrons and then tell them, oh, you have to put a hold on this. Greedy publisher bastards.
Although I do not take my Nook in the bath.
Yeah, you're right. It's not the form that matters. What matters is that we're reading. I think that's why I've started to mentally refer to books as stories. That's what really matters to me, and what I think should really matter. Unless we're talking about a rare edition or an art book, it's the content that's important.
And it's not that books-as-objects aren't important or useful or wonderful or special. They can be. I think for me, thinking of books as magical objects came from finding the act of reading magical, but because the only vessel I had available was the book, I transferred the magic to the object. But so much of magic, if I believe all the stories I read, is the act, the will, the intention, not really the object, although different objects have different “powers.” Wow, I can feel myself going down a super nerdy rabbit hole with this, and since I'm at work, I'll back off … for now. 😉