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About This Blog
Michael Merschel: Michael Merschel edits books coverage for The Dallas Morning News. November 2010
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As I have said, I love gadgets, and I love books. I'm not one who looks forward to a day when I have to read my books on a gadget. Still, the Amazon reader announced yesterday (story below) seems like a step in right direction. If it lives up to the hype, it could be the first reader that tries not to replace the book, but to take advantage of the things that computers do well. Put another way, I wouldn't want to sit back in my recliner in the evening and curl up with a cup of coffee and a glowing plastic box on my lap. But I would definitely consider packing said box in my carry-on on my next overseas flight, if it meant I could leave five or six paperbacks at home. (Historical aside: Some of you might recall that Mark Twain, my favorite literary gadget freak, went bankrupt trying to bankroll an automatic typesetting machine. Its main problem was that it tried to adapt modern technology to the old way of doing things -- in this case, a typesetter preparing pages in a way that Gutenberg himself might have recognized. It broke easily, and the Linotype, a simpler but more practical device, became the new standard.) And now, back to the future. Here are some links of interest, gathered from various sources: Cnet.com offers a comparison with Sony's own reader. (Which the DMN's Jim Rossman reviewed earlier this year.) Wired News also has a nice side-by-side comparison. FishbowlNY reports from the press conference and offers some analysis. Newsweek put the dang thing on its cover. Curious to hear your thoughts, dear readers. By ANICK JESDANUN Archived Comments |
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I've given a lot of thought to this, mostly because I am gradually being pushed out of my own home by books. I love the fact that I have them, that I can reach up to the shelf next to where I'm sitting right now and pull down, say, Umberto Eco's "The Island of the Day Before" or "Pencil" by Henry Petroski, or Peter Ackroyd's "Blake" and open them and read them. Their physical heft is reassuring.
But writing happens in the mind, and I have to ask myself does it make much difference how it gets there? Is Proust somehow less Proustian on a $399 ebook reader than in the three-volume slipcased set on my shelf? Why do I own all these dead trees? Does it have something to do with my working-class parents, for whom possession of a book was a sign of culture and education? Or my own sometime uncertainty about my own education? Is physical possession Robert Coles' "Children of Crisis" series proof-- to me, at least -- that I've read it? I wonder if the need to hold a book in our hands, in our lap is really about reading, or is it about something else??
Bill, years ago I read of a study suggesting that a love of gardening is somehow genetic -- that all our ancestors at one point forged a bond with the soil, and the mere act of working the earth was somehow essentially human.
I realize that books have been on the scene for only a few hundred years, but I almost wonder if our attachment is similarly primal? Perhaps our brains are just conditioned to receive knowledge from ink on the page?
I say this as someone who has been staring at computer screens since grade school. I'm not anti-computer. I just know that people have bonds with books that go beyond the information contained therein, which can be transmitted by digits and pixels as easily as ink and paper.
The tactile sense of handling a book is something that many book lovers feel deeply, but it's hard to convey to someone for whom the book is only a medium for information or entertainment. Across the country, you find "Book and Paper Shows" put on by and for aficionados of the ink-and-paper experience.
I read a mystery novel recently that touched on this aspect): The Sense of Paper by Taylor Holden, pseudonym of Wendy Holden, who was a war correspondent for the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph. It was a compelling story interweaving the topics of war and art paper (though it was very graphic and just a bit disjointed from trying to encompass too many big themes).
Well, my interests are narrow, by one definition - Texana, books and stuff about Texas; I take bibliograpy in a broad sense - whatever contains information. As the Rose-Bezos interview began that night, I opened a bottle of Merlot. Three hours later I slept. By 2010, the Kindle will hold 1000 titles. By 2010 most volumes before 1940 will be copyright-free and we'll be able to load our own stuff into Kindle. By 2010 Kindle will be a plastic sheet foldable for the pocket. Disregarding my atavistic, luddistic pleasure for the Fahreheit 451 format, what would I choose for my Texas 1000? I drank the merlot slowly. I awoke still wondering and turned the leather-bound, untrimmed leaves of C.W. Raines 1896 "Bibliography of Texas." Hmmm, what would Cadwell do?