-
The Seventeen Year Itch
May 15, 2013 | 6 comments
-
Questions
May 1, 2013 | 50 comments
-
Stifling Our Children
April 15, 2013 | 39 comments
-
Thoughts on Gay Marriage
March 27, 2013 | 96 comments
-
Baseball Saints and Sinners
March 13, 2013 | 13 comments
Another Perspective
A Paean to the Printed Page
What child will ever experience a love affair with Kindles?
When you are a child, little things make a big impression on you. One of the first things I can remember as a little girl was huge. My father was always surrounded by a great pile of books that seemed to reach all the way up the vine-covered wallpaper of our kitchen, to the ceiling, and higher. From my vantage point of maybe two and a half feet off the floor, the stack of books seemed to be if not an actual part of my father, one of the things about him that made his presence a wonderful place to be.
When he was growing up in the Great Depression, my dad’s one luxury was the public library where, by the age of ten, he had devoured every offering in the little alcove that housed the children’s books, and so he was granted special permission by the funereal library matrons to access the hallowed inner sanctum where adults could breach all the mysteries of the universe. He never lost his sense of wonder or gratitude that he was deemed worthy of this chance to penetrate the immortality that seemed to attach itself to the printed word.
And so I commenced a love affair with books before I could even heft one, let alone delve into its surely sacred contents. As I grew older, I loved the look, the feel and even the smell of books. I thought that the best end I could ever reach was to die in the midst of rafts of books lining the shelves of my own private library. Forget about husband, family or property; to me, to own an author’s words was to own him, in a way. This, I thought, was the path to a true connection with eternity. Later on, of course, this took on a different meaning in the words of St. Mark’s Gospel, where Jesus said: Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.
So much faith, joy and knowledge at one’s fingertips; a constant companion, always ready to teach, entertain or inspire. But in addition to these benefits, there is the very feel of a book, especially a heavy tome — something like City of God by St. Augustine — that imparts a particular sense of accomplishment to those valiant enough to breach its walls. Or a thin volume of poetry; its pages fanned by the smaller fingers of the hand; something that Hamlet might carry upon making an entrance. Life without these treasures would be unimaginable for me and for countless folks like me.
And so it was with trepidation that I read last week that Amazon.com announced that for the first time, sales of titles for its Kindle e-readers outpaced those of hardcover books. Now, I’m no luddite when it comes to the advance of technology, but I hope I’m not wrong in predicting that the surge in the sale of e-books is merely a fad and not a trend As we grow more and more into a technologically based society, we are losing touch with the sensible world around us. This push-button lifestyle brings us further and further away from simple pleasures; those that may be enjoyed even without electricity.
A few of my friends own Kindles and have pointed out some of their obvious advantages; primary among them the ability to be in possession of a limitless number of titles with a device weighing less than a pound. Pardon me, but I actually enjoy the bulk of books; the most difficult packing decisions for me are not those of clothes or makeup, but which books will be lugged by my husband in the over-sized suitcase that we call “the green monster.” A Kindler will also tout this advantage in regards to summer reading at the beach, but it’s my guess that they’ll soon miss their favorite paperback when it comes to protecting the bridge of their nose as they lazily doze amidst the dunes.
As did my father when I was a little girl, I encourage children to read: read anything that catches their fancy and if Kindles are the only means to this end, then fine. But my suggestion to the young is to pick up a real book, love it, and reread it until its pages are yellow and dog-eared and then pass it on to someone else. Then none of you will have cause to pause when someone asks you that popular question: If you had three books to take with you should you ever be stranded on a deserted island, what would they be?
Letter to the Editor View all comments (37) | Leave a comment
More Articles by Lisa Fabrizio
More Articles From Another Perspective
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/28/a-paean-to-the-printed-page
Follow us:
ADVERTISEMENT
SPONSORED LINKS
FLASHBACK TO: 1995
-
Pope Culture
A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
-
Why the GOP Does Not, Like, Totally Suck
Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
-
Dames at Sea
-
In the Absence of Guns
In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
-
The Metaphysical Martini
-
Counting the Costs of Clintonism
The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
-
Chuck McHagel
It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
-
The Legacy of Old John and Mother Fresh-Roasted
-
It’s the Best Time of the Year
The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
-
The Bush Crack-Up
Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?
Clip of the Day
H/T to National Review Online
ADVERTISEMENT
Alice Moore| 7.28.10 @ 6:44AM
My son and I are owners of the Kindle. For someone in the Armed Forces and deployed overseas, the Kindle is a Godsend. There are hundreds of titles for reading pleasure. Anyone who has space considerations finds the Kindle of use.
I hope the author doesn't feel threatened by the Kindle, Nook, eReader and other devices. Books such as the Bible, Shakespeare, and others will always be in demand.
Kitty| 7.28.10 @ 9:04AM
That's the first really good reason I've heard in kindle's favor.
Like Lisa Fabrizio, "I'm no luddite when it comes to the advance of technology." In fact, I'm utterly fascinated by technology. I'm certainly not 'threatened' by e-readers, nor do I care who buys them for whatever reason. E-readers are simply not for me.
Harry the Horrible| 7.28.10 @ 9:34AM
My wife gave me a kindle for Father's Day. This was, in part, an effort to reduce the number of books in our house.
I would never have purchased one, myself. I like paper books.
However, I have come to love the device. In addition to reducing the number of books in my house, the Kindle has made available a large number of older, "classic," books for free. It is quite joy to be able to obtain the works of Dornford Yates, John Buchan, and H. Beam Piper for very low prices, without have to search used bookstores or order them through ABE.
On the other hand, used book store have charms all their own.
And the easy availability of books through "WhisperNet" is dangerous to my wallet.
Lastly, I have number of "books on PDF" that I'm having trouble formatting for use with my Kindle.
Overall, I am hoping that the Kindle wins the format wars and becomes the device of choice.
RCV| 7.28.10 @ 1:09PM
I had the very same reaction. As a confirmed book-lover, I was Kindle-resistent but got one as a gift. While I still buy lots of hard covers, it's a joy to be able to download a book you've just heard about instantly, especially when traveling, and not have to fill your suitcase with heavy books or desperately search for a book store.
Kitty| 7.28.10 @ 7:02AM
An e-reader will never replace the comfort of snuggling up on the couch with a good book on a rainy day, or the joy of stumbling across a f
Kitty| 7.28.10 @ 7:07AM
As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted by technology...
An e-reader will never replace the comfort of snuggling up on the couch with a good book on a rainy day, or the joy of stumbling across a favorite childhood book in the attic while looking for something else.
E-readers may be just the thing for some people, but not for me.
Occam's Tool| 7.28.10 @ 5:26PM
Kitty,
have you ever held a Kindle? I read mine in bed and lying in my La-Z-Boy. It's a very booklike setup.
Kitty| 7.28.10 @ 6:44PM
You remind me of my first boyfriend, except he wasn't talking about a Kindle.
Appleby| 7.28.10 @ 7:27AM
The other thing about the elctronic book is that it is vulnerable to being Sanitized For Your Protection as some politically correct Marching Mommy demands that history be rewritten to make her child believe there are no White people in Atlanta -- and there never were.
I am pleased to report that the books we loved as children are returning to print -- in their original autographs, not Sanitized For Our Protection or even worse, *updated* to add sex, anorexia, vampires, divorce, or alternate universes in the attic. Trixie Belden, the Bobbsey Twins, Beezus and Ramona, Betsy and Billy, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys -- all coming to a bookstore near you, at the demand, so I am told, of parents who are sick and tired of the filth and spew that pass for literature in todays *literature* for kids.
By the way, if you are buying a copy of *Heidi* for your daughter, the way to tell if it is a good translation is to turn to the last page of the first chapter where Heidi asks her grandfather the names of his goats. The good translations preserve their Swiss names -- Schwanli and Barli; the bad translations call them Dusky and Dawn or some other stupid English names.
Lissa | 8.6.10 @ 1:12PM
Have you found that in a Kindle edition? I've always come up dry -- "Little Swan" and "Little Bear" are NOT their correct names!
JohnStacey| 7.28.10 @ 8:34AM
Books are your silent friends.(That speak volumes)
Kitty| 7.28.10 @ 8:57AM
I like that :~)
Darrell Judd| 7.28.10 @ 8:35AM
Lisa:
Actually what Amazon announced was that the number of ebooks sold (content) exceeded the number of hardcover books sold.
First. They sell more paperbacks than hardcovers even without Kindle.
Second. Some of the ebooks are priced at $1. Many are free. These are counted as units sold.
What Amazon will never tell you is the revenue from ebooks (content) versus the revenue from selling Kindles. Because they make all of their money off selling a proprietary device to read a proprietary format.
Paevo| 7.28.10 @ 8:40AM
One of the important things about books is the concept of anamnesis, or loss of forgetfulness, experienced when flipping through pages and remembering through the aid of notes, comments, etc. The book is a whole and its content is a whole that can be re-membered by dint of being re-read. The transient, ephemeral character of the Web is a direct impediment to this concept: it is arguably hostile to it. "Knowledge" that is never more than a mouseclick away has no need to be remembered... I left academe at around the same time that kids were copying and pasting articles by French film critics and trying to pass them off as their own...
Bob K.| 7.28.10 @ 8:47AM
Good point Paevo!
You can't dog ear a Kindle or write in the margin or attach a paper clip to an important page or quickly flip back to look at a map or graph either!
Elhombrelibre| 7.28.10 @ 1:18PM
Bob K., you can make notes as you read an ebook on your Kindle. It's not like taking an ink pen to a paperback, but you can make notes.
Bob K.| 7.28.10 @ 5:28PM
OK.
I'll look into it.
Thanks.
Thomas| 7.28.10 @ 9:23AM
Ah, yes. The Return of the Cult of the Book. Both electronic media and printed media have their pros and cons. Electronic media allows the user to carry literally thousands of tomes in their pocket at the same time. For the professional, or even the amateur enthusiast, this allows the convenience of access to an entire library anywhere, anytime. The per unit cost of electronic media is significantly lower than that of printed media, allowing the reader to have access to a far greater wealth of material. With an electronim reader, the font size can be adjusted at will, making it unnecessary for the reader to replace texts with small type for those with larger type as they age and their vision deteriorates. And, finally, it is technologically feasible to allow electronic book readers to reproduce printed text as speech, thereby turning the electronic book readers into actual book readers for the vision impaired.
Books have their pros as well. One can develop an impressive physique by lugging a sufficient quantity ob books around with them at all times. Books have no batteries and, therefor, never need to be recharged. Books, unlike electronic book readers, can be used to level that old table or desk with the one short leg. And, books, unlike the Kindle, can be used to decorate a room.
Electronic media is here to stay. The advantages of having a wealth of information, either in easily transportable form as in a book reader or as accessed from your home computer or laptop via the internet, is staggering. No longer is it necessary to sally forth in inclement weather and cover vast distances to the local library to seek information from a text that may not be available there. No longer is one necessarily confined to a musty library to gain knowledge or recreation.
For those that wish to, anachronistic practices are still available. One can read the printed word from paper or papyrus as it was originally written by the light of guttering candles and bits of cloth floating in a vessel filled with oil. Modern conveniences are additions to previous practices, they are not necessarily replacements.
Paevo| 7.28.10 @ 9:33AM
Never rule out unintended consequences, Thomas! By the way, I do web design now, so I know as much as anyone the realities of the new media. But having observed firsthand the effect of it on university students, I honestly feel that there will not be deleterious effects. Starting with spelling, for instance, all the way up to conceptualization.
Face it: knowledge involves mastery at many levels, and the ease with which pseudo-knowledge can be acces via Internet invariably creates a climate of laziness with regard to the furtherance of knowledge...
Bob K.| 7.28.10 @ 5:33PM
Good points all, Thomas!
As long as the electricity is working.
Bob K.| 7.28.10 @ 5:36PM
A barbarian civilization can get the potential to destroy this library much faster and more efficiently than the great library at Alexandria was destroyed.
Melvin| 7.28.10 @ 10:00AM
I have a NOOK and it carries a myriad of books from the bible to Alexis De Tocqueville, "Democracy in America."
I use NOOK as just another tool to expand my knowledge. I acquired it not to replace my own library but to augment it.
Many books are not meant to be electronized(word I made up), but rather to be stood on end as silent sentinels to mans advancement or retreat.
My wife bless her heart does not out of fear what might lie within or out of respect does not invade my inner sanctum of more books than space.
I'm not advocating the purchase of a NOOK and I don't know the other electronic readers that are out there but the NOOK when my eyes get tired or weak, I can increase the font that makes it more pleasing to the eye so to speak, and since it is not back lit, you don't get that feeling of having your eyes pulled out of your sockets.
I guess what ever it takes to get kids to read is a major hurdle do to electronic games doing the thinking for the kid instead of reading a book that makes the kid formulate his own thoughts and opinions of what he has read.
But there is just that something about being immersed in a library especially a really, really old one that stirs ones creativity, oh hell I'm romanticizing again.
MAJ Mike| 7.28.10 @ 10:08AM
I don't have an e-book reader yet, but intend to get one before my next deployment. The instantaneous downloading of books and the capacity to carry an entire library in a single player is just too much of a convenience for me, but it will never keep me from loving and buying books on paper. Just as the printing press made the dissemination of mass-produced books a reality and drove the calligraphers and manuscript illuminators to the fringes of publishing, e-books will supplement, but never entirely replace, the printed word. I don't find the Kindle particularly threatening, but I also don't see it replacing books, so much as supplementing them. Those who love books will continue to buy and read them on paper, but will find the convenience of carrying a reference library, a stack of summer reading or a course reading list on one device to be compelling arguments for the new devices. The challenge to writers and publishers is to create compelling material, not lament the passing of their boutique businesses.
Kitty| 7.28.10 @ 12:34PM
Good luck on your next deployment, and thank you for your service.
Jdt| 7.28.10 @ 11:33AM
All the good things having been said about books, I must say, on a practical and personal level, a great obstacle in my life has been overcome. I love to read but have since my college years suffered from allergies to old books/dust mites, etc.
I've been constrained to new, not used, books - and that has meant libraries were off limits. So I celebrate the Kindle and all it's ereader cousins. God forbid the emergence of the kindlemite.
Sheila| 7.28.10 @ 1:39PM
While I will never cease buying and reading books, I hope to get a Kindle this coming Christmas to augment my reading habits. As I've read others' reviews regarding the pros and cons of various e-readers, I've come to appreciate the idea of having volumes of classic literature easily at hand for reference and the ability to eliminate purchasing cheap paperbacks that I will only read once. If something's a keeper, I can easily buy a hard copy as well. There's room for more than one medium of transmission. Personally, I can't see anything electronic taking the place of happily searching library stacks for me, however; I still miss the old card catalogue where I spent many an hour and made many a serendipitous discovery.
tdiinva| 7.28.10 @ 3:40PM
I have similar feelings to Ms. Fabrizio however one mornig I woke up and looked at the stack of books next to me and I realized we had run out of space. It came down between a choice of a E-book reader or getting rid of some of my rather vast library. After a little research i decided on buying the Barnes and Noble Nook. It has a better operating system and software architecture then the Kindle and Barnes and Noble has far more E-titles then Amazon.
I have never understood the preference people have for Amazon and its faux cutting edge business model. Amazon is nothing more then a moderinzed catalog based mail order house. Barnes and Noble and Border offer the same service and I think they do it better then Amazon.
Occam's Tool| 7.28.10 @ 5:22PM
I have two kids, age 6 and 7, and 4 kindles. My kids love their books and their Kindles. Think of the Kindle as a bookshelf that costs $189 and can hold on it 1500 books in a small space.
Appleby| 7.28.10 @ 7:27PM
But how do you know the book you thought you were downloading for your child is the same as the book by that title you read as a child?
Hugh Loftings Doctor Doolittle books have been Sanitized For Your Protection by removing Prince Bumpo, who is described in my 1950s editions as *a Negro* and is in fact a hilarious British version of the Country Bumpkin who comes to town -- and a sly dig at the sons of colonial big shots who attended Cambridge and Oxford (as did Bumpo) and returned to their countries to turn them into Modern India. A smarmy afterword in one of the modern Sanitized volumes says sanctimoniously that Hugh Lofting would thank them for bastardizing his books. Millions whose parents and grandparents never studied British history will never know the difference -- and now the Kindle Kiddies will not even have the impetus to ask and learn about the British Raj.
Oh, and if you want to learn how far the current Twitheads have fallen, get the ORIGINAL Beatrix Potter tale of Peter Rabbit, which included words such as *soporific* that infants understood when she was writing. Kindle Kiddies will be handed a version in no more than 140 characters.
Thomas| 7.29.10 @ 8:47PM
The same way you tell if the latest addition of the printed wok you just bought is the same as the original, read it and compare.
How many revisions have been made to the Bible, the Encyclopedia Britannica and hundreds of other works?
That's the biz, sweetheart.
Dick Simmons| 7.28.10 @ 8:55PM
Bob K. has a point. TheKindle is a handy little gadget. When I worked at a chain bookstore I was impressed by the people of all walks of life and class who were charmed by its features; from the prison guard who used his 10 minute smoke breaks to pick up where he left off on his crime thriller, to the eighty something woman who loved the ability to increase the font size. But all in all, it's a toy, albiet a smart toy. Many of my prized books are on acid-free paper. I have some older volumes that are 100+ years old. Not to say that the Dark Ages are ready to come, but if The Catastrophe arrives we're not likely to have generations of monks labouring to save what knowledge or art that may survive the crash with the iceberg. I doubt that what people are reading on their pads, phones, or what-not will last out the decade. By all means, have fun, READ! But don't be so ready to bury the book.
Baldemar Huerta| 7.29.10 @ 12:09AM
Article in 8 words: You kids stay the hell off my lawn!
NANCY | 7.29.10 @ 9:48PM
I live in Mexico in a humid environment, meaning books don't last long. Books in English can be hard to come by - or for me books that I want to read in English! My kindle is perfect. And it isn't an exclusive thing - most of my books I read on my Kindle, but I read regular books, too. For me, and others who live where obtaining good books in English is a pain in the neck, a Kindle is wonderful. It really is not an either-or thing. I will say that if I was offered the same book in hard copy or Kindle, I'd take the Kindle. I just like reading on them better. The only downside to me is that my husband and I ask each other "what are you reading" over and over because the Kindle doesn't reflect the book cover like a regular book does!
Roberta| 8.3.10 @ 1:59PM
First let me say "bravo to the author". What a wonderful read.
Second, let me say that I was offered a Kindle 2 from a friend, at a very deep discount (can you say 80%?). I borrwed it for a few days and came away with the overriding feeling that it was a badly weighted device, especially when compared with a book. It's thin, tall, but weighty in some odd way. You hold one, in two hands, for more than 15 minutes, and you feel it every-so-slowly tipping away from you -- it's just not a good feel.
And, if you're a reader of history and sci fi/fantasty (among other genres), just try quickly flipping from your current page to the maps near the start of the book -- ugh.
Until the future arrives and I can read books via holographic images in mid-air (there's that sci fi fan in me!), I'll stay with the original.
Adult toys | 7.4.11 @ 3:34AM
l like the space.support.
thank you.