Will it be around in another twenty years? People talk about their electronic readers and send me clipped newspaper articles about the demise of books and bookstores. For those of us who love books, the idea is laughable.
It isn’t just stick-in-the-mud thinking here. I’m all for technology, even if I can’t drive and phone at the same time. Give me gigabytes on flash drives. Upload your digital photos to me. Text yo’ daddy.
A digital representation of a book, though – isn’t a book. Kindle me this: for the price of your black and white screen, plastic-housed text presenter, you could have purchased a first edition, leather-bound, marble-papered classic, dating to a time before the US Civil War.
Granted, you probably won’t drag it into bed with you and snuggle under the quilt to read it. That’s what those glow-in-the-dark Kindle-Nook-iPad eReaders are for. In fact, since they don’t have a cover or a dustjacket, you can download those bodice-ripping romance novels you’ve pined for all these years, but had too much pride to carry around. On the Kindle, no one knows what you’re skimming.
Books – if they do disappear – will never completely vanish. They’ll be preserved just like the vintage models kept up by old car buffs who gather with their restored British sportscars and Detroit muscle cars. We booklovers will park our volumes on Sunday afternoons in the Burger Street parking lot, cranking up the classical music while sitting in canvas director’s chairs.
“Ah!” we’ll say, as we wander around the asphalt lot. “Look at the leather spine on that beauty! Unrestored, too! They just don’t make books like that anymore…”