In which I concede that e-books are sort-of OK...

Several years ago on this blog I presented an argument against e-books, vowing that I would never use them. But during this pandemic, e-books (and audiobooks) have been a godsend.

That's because the local library is still closed to the public. To borrow a physical book, I have to order the book online, then wait for the librarians to find it on the shelf (at whichever library it is available) and notify me. I then must make an appointment to pick it up within whatever timeframe they have available, sometimes days away. The library leaves the borrowed book(s) on a table in the alcove, in a paper bag with my name on it. 

When I borrowed a book this summer on how to learn Korean the whole process took a couple of weeks. And it turned out to be the wrong book. Without being able to browse it on the shelf (or see previews of it online), I hadn't realized that the book used a Romanized Korean alphabet, when the whole point was that I wanted learn to read Korean.

Last week when I wanted to borrow The Dutch House by Ann Patchett, I merely had to go to my phone, open the Libby library app and request to borrow it, and download the audiobook to the app, which took maybe ten minutes. I was given 21 days to read it. After a few days, when I wasn't feeling Tom Hanks's narration, I checked Libby again and found an e-book copy available and was able to download it in under five minutes to my iPad, so I could read it with the Kindle app. (I sat up last night, well past midnight, to finish it). I sent back both versions of the now-finished book this morning via the app, and now it's available to the next readers on the list.

So I don't think e-books are evil anymore. They serve a purpose. But I don't want paper books to be entirely replaced with them. When my iPad battery runs down, poof, the book disappears. Meanwhile, all the paper books I own sit placidly on the shelves.

1. The end of the world as we used to know it; 2. Zombieland

1. Last night I rode the Metro to D.C. for the first time in many months. What struck me most was that every passenger was looking at and tapping on a smartphone—not a paper newspaper or book in sight. Even the Metro construction worker I passed on the way to the escalator was taking a break and... looking at his Kindle. It was as if a nuclear war had obliterated all the non-virtual text in-hand in the world. (Except for me. I pulled out my latest edition of one story magazine, which I keep in my purse, and read one of the finest short stories I've read in a while, “The World to Come” by Jim Shepard.)

In the past, when sitting on the Metro, I could tell who was reading a romance novel, who was reading historical fiction, etc. I sometimes struck up conversations with people who were reading authors I love.* But how would I know what they were reading (or doing) on their phones? Hunkering over a phone is not an interrupt-able activity. They could be reading work emails, writing texts to their boyfriends, researching restaurants. Each passenger in his or her own miniature workstation, accessing and accessible to invisible conversations.

2. This is what I find so eerie and irritating about all the smartphone technology. A person is there, and yet not there at all, their minds like the little yellow man on Google Maps, pinned to a web page. Lately I've been running into people jabbering loudly to themselves whom I think are crazy until they turn their heads and I see the small cylindrical earpiece that connects them to the Matrix. Wherever I see groups of people sitting down, there's always now a significant percentage of them looking at their cellphones. Even at the comedy club I went to last night, during the actual sets, every few minutes someone pulled out a phone and tapped into it. For all I know a play-by-play of the comedy competition was being uploaded simultaneously to dozens of Facebook pages or Twitter accounts. Or people were checking their emails.

I have lately coveted a smartphone—partly, yes, because I envy my hubby's ability to pull out his semi-smartphone and find a restaurant close by or settle trivia arguments with correct answers. But mostly because the power goes out in our house at least twice a year and I can't access my email—more than an irritation when your at-home editing work often depends on a swift response.

But I worry about being accessible always, and of the temptation to constantly share my thoughts and visage with everyone everywhere. Worse, I worry about becoming another zombie—what I call people who constantly check or look at things on their cell phones. They are there, and yet they are not, each in his own little world, sucking up data with his tiny device, wanting ever more.

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* FYI - I never interrupted any readers, only talking to them when they had set a book aside...

In which I suddenly express a small amount of desire for an e-reader

I admit that I've been pretty disdainful of eBooks in most past posts on this blog. But last weekend, I felt a glimmer of desire for one of the dang things.

I was trying to squeeze all the new books that E-girl received for Christmas and her birthday into already packed shelves. They...wouldn't...fit.

She is very sentimental. Suggestions that we give away some of the books she doesn't read anymore have been met with tears. She won't get rid of even the books that don't deserve a second reading like those from the Dear Dumb Diary series. Being surrounded by books is a comfort to her, even the stack of Dr. Suesses on the top shelf that she hasn't read in seven years.

"What if," a little voice in my head whispered, "all those throw-away tween novels had been on an e-reader? She could still have access to them, but they wouldn't be crowding all these shelves."

(In the past, we could get such books from the library. But our public library is struggling and its book budget has been slashed. If they buy new books at all it's sometimes one copy for 19+ branches. When we went to look for books on planning children's parties last week, we found the same books that were there 10 years ago. So if we want something new, we now have to buy it ourselves. Or, possibly, wait a long time in an online queue.)

And when she struggles to put on her backpack in the morning, filled with books, I sometimes wish I could load up textbooks and novels on a small e-Reader for her.

Of course, there's still the problem of misplacing or losing such an expensive tool. If not lost out of a backpack, I imagine it could be easily buried under a pile of books in her room.

So I won't be ordering a Kindle anytime soon. But it's starting to appear, sometimes, on a Wish List in my mind.

Try doing this with an e-book

Fun, whimsical video of what goes on in a bookstore in the after-hours.

A mission of salvation in a dark basement room

Yesterday I scavenged through a dead woman's bookshelves. Although I don't know her name, or anything about her except that she was a former school teacher and a survivor of the Holocaust, I came to admire and like her in the couple of hours that I was there in her dark, empty house.

The books we found there gave evidence of an intelligent person with eclectic tastes: hardcover, first-edition novels (from Lolita to Star Trek), a collection of Samuel Beckett's work (in English and French), travel books, cookbooks and issues of Bon Appetit, humor, biography, and trendy psychology—written in English, French, German, Spanish and even Russian. She had been a voracious reader—there were stacks of books in other rooms of the house,  and they obviously had been read because almost every one contained scribbled comments on the inside front page that summed up her reactions, e.g., "...highly amusing" and "...a suspenseful read."

My companion and I were there to take out what we could for the local high school's annual book sale because no one else wanted her books. She had been single, childless and elderly, and after she died in that house, no one came to claim her books. In fact, the realtor who bought it was just going to throw them away. We were there on a mission of salvation.

Looking through her collection, I was reminded of the autistic knitter. This woman's book collection also represented a kind of art form or life's work. And all of it, including her tiny commentaries, had been destined for a garbage can. Perhaps there was other evidence remaining of her life beyond that quiet house—art works or crafts or letters she had written, still preserved by companions or the sons and daughters of her companions—but I doubted it. With a sinking feeling, I felt like I was deciding what part of her would go on, even if only to strangers that won't know her name.

But what struck me more was the sudden realization that if everything she had read had been on an e-reader, my friend and I wouldn't have been there in her house in the first place, and I never would have spent those few moments in her lingering presence. All those titles, the odd juxtapositions of Art Buchwald and Ferlingetti and science fiction paperbacks, gone in a blip.

The non-virtual books that will remain

In a recent post, I gave my five arguments about why (some) books should continue on paper. But the reality is that the non-virtual books that are likely to survive may not be the picture books and beach paperbacks I advocated for, but books for collectors.

This week CBS devoted a Sunday Morning segment to Taschen Books, which publishes large and beautiful books, sometimes costing thousands of dollars. (Their limited edition Muhammad Ali book costs $15,000). The books are sold online and in their dozen Taschen bookstores. 

Until someone figures out how to create value and exclusivity in e-books (which I can't envision happening ever), art/collectible books—and comic books—will continue to be published on paper.

Five arguments against the total inevitability of e-books

Surprisingly, many writers I know are starting to embrace e-book technology. They cite their portability—parents can load up a bunch of kids’ books for long car trips (which might mean more book sales); their paper-bag potential (no one will know you’re reading a romance novel on the subway); and their prospects for generous royalties (anywhere from 25 percent to nearly 100 percent, for self-publishers).

Perhaps the most persuasive argument is that they save trees.

As I’ve said in a past post, I’ll probably be the last person in the United States to buy an e-reader* because they're expensive and I lose things.  But there are still broader, compelling reasons to continue publishing things on paper, including:

1. Longevity. I've had some of the books on my shelves for more than 30 years. If they were in bygone electronic formats (like 8-track tapes or 5-inch floppy disks) they would be useless now. This year's e-book probably won't be readable a decade from now. Good books meant to last still need to be on paper, even if also available electronically.

2. Tactility. Babies need board books they can grab and chew on, and which can offer smooth, rough and fuzzy elements.

3. Sturdiness. Small children need books they can fling and sit on without parents screaming at them. At the same time, the perfect vacation book is not something worth $100+, which must be vigilantly guarded against theft, sunscreen and drops of water. (I've never figured out how the sunbathers in the recent Kindle commercial are going to swim since they can't leave it on their towels).

4. Accessibility. More and more e-editions will mean fewer book titles for the poor. Even if libraries begin to lend e-readers, their cost will limit how many customers can be serviced at any given time. Many families won't be able to buy multiple e-readers, meaning that if newspapers go entirely electronic, sharing the Sunday paper will be a thing of the past—everyone will have to wait their turn.

5. Locality/serendipity. I'm a trained librarian, but I still find many books in my house by the color of their spines, their placement on the shelves. An html search has its value (for finding recipes online, etc.), but it's not the same as browsing a physical space. Many is the time I've stumbled upon an interesting book simply because of where it was in the library—on an adjacent shelf or left on a table. And I would miss bookstores. People who love books need a place where they can go and see one another occasionally. The virtual bookstore is a silent and lonely place.
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* My resolve is not entirely firm since I have the Kindle App on my iPod now (pictured above)—but it gives me a headache if I read on it for more than ten minutes at a time.

In defense of paper

At a PTA meeting I went to a couple of nights ago, some parents argued that, for ecological reasons, the PTA newsletter should no longer be printed and mailed. They argued that parents should read the newsletter online and not expect a paper copy, which costs the PTA thousands of dollars each year in printing and mailing costs. The counter-argument was that not all parents have computers and/or Internet access. So an ad hoc committee was formed that will look into providing computers to parents who don’t have them in the home. (Although, now that I think about it, I’m not sure that the energy required to manufacture, ship and run a computer is all that much ecologically better, in the long run, than printing and mailing a bi-monthly newsletter).

I receive the PTA newsletter by email because it arrives a week earlier that way, but I don’t want to receive all my news—or all the words I read—this way. The primary reason is that it hurts my neck to read at the computer for long stretches of time. And online text glows, which never feels natural to me. Stare at it too long and I start getting eyestrain and an ache in my forehead. I never had a headache in my life—or neck problems—until I started to use a computer in the late 1980s.

If everything goes online, I’m afraid readers of the future will be awkward head-jutting, Advil-popping creatures tethered to the computer screen (since that will be their only access to any kind of writing and all measures of entertainment), unable to move away since their physical misery will keep them from wanting to get up.

Of course, there are portable devices that lack the glow of a computer screen, and which you can read as you eat breakfast, but as I said in a previous post, unless the Kindle becomes so cheap I can buy it at the Dollar Store, where I buy my sunglasses, I’m not likely to own one. Leaving the paper Style section of the Washington Post behind on your Metro seat is no big deal; reading it on a Kindle and leaving the Kindle on your Metro seat is nearly tragic, given its current cost.

But beyond cost and discomfort, I would miss paper because books and magazines are more inviting to me than hyperlinks. Sure there are splashy web pages, but looking at a publication online, I miss the typical Table of Contents, being able to physically thumb through a magazine, letting things catch my eye. More than anything, I'd miss layouts—I rarely see an online layout that compares to a great two-page spread.

And, since I have chosen what comes into my home, the books and magazines I own or borrow from the library usually have more authority than whatever pops up in a Google answer. One of the best books I own is The Indoor Kitchen Garden, which I bought 20 years ago—$14.95 seemed so extravagant at the time. I used it to start an herb garden in my high-rise, no balcony apartment in D.C. and still use it to figure out what plants can go on my deck in containers. Plant by plant, it tells me how big the pot must be to provide for the roots, what the soil pH should be, etc. I’ve tried to find similar information on the Internet but when I type in “basil,” I’m given hundreds of pages, most not specific to container gardening, many written with god-knows what expertise. I can try to sift through and navigate the many possibilities on the Internet, or simply go to my bookshelf, pull down my well-worn book, and have my answer in a just a minute.

Postscript: I wrote this on my laptop a couple of days ago and uploaded it today, finally realizing the irony of complaining about reading on the Internet via a blog post that I now hope people will read on... the Internet.

Why I'm not buying an e-reader

I am not going to buy a Kindle. Not even if print newspapers disappear and "print" news is available only on such a device. Not even if paperbacks and hardcovers go away and all new books are issued electronically.

My obstinance in this regard is not from a tactile need to feel and smell a paper book, nor because I love getting black ink on my hands every morning when I read the Washington Post. The reason I won't buy a Kindle is the same reason I never buy anything but Dollar Store sunglasses anymore: I'm sure I would lose it. I would set it down on a Metro seat or leave it at someone's house and that would be the end of it. Not such a bad thing when you lose a paperback book that costs five bucks, but near tragic when the device you're reading it on costs more than $100.

Perhaps it is because I am a kleptomaniac when it comes to pens—my drawers are full of pens I've permanently borrowed from stores (to sign credit card receipts, etc.) and from friends—that the universe requires a balance. Thus, I constantly lose sunglasses. So many sunglasses that I now buy five to ten cheap pairs at the start of the summer, and feel lucky if I can get to the end of the summer with one pair left.

So, when the Kindle sells for a dollar, or it's as cheap as a pen and friends don't mind too much if I absently take it from them, I'll be glad to have one, no matter how temporary.