Books and eBooks

I was perusing Metafilter the other day, and in much the same way I will gravitate toward a bookstore while walking down the street, I was drawn to this post about Amazon’s Kindle Fire. Though I can’t profess an interest in owning an e-reader, I’m always fascinated by discussions surrounding them. For every person who swears by their e-reader, there’s another who refuses to concede their affinity for the smell, weight, texture, or not-stored-in-a-Cloud-ness characteristics of printed materials.

Indeed, these discussions tend to circle each other equally. There are many reasons why both books and their electronic counterparts are great ways to read, and you won’t find me complaining if more people are reading in general, regardless of the way in which they choose to do so. One of the nicest things I’ve noticed about e-readers is the ability to download books from your local library. Yet one word that popped out at me in the aforementioned post got me thinking, and that word is consumption.

Galactus, Devourer of Worlds: 'It all started when I got a Nook for my birthday..."

To be brief, the strength of the Kindle Fire was described by its function as a media consumption device. This is evidently a market segment between a calculator and a tablet computer, and while tablets are certainly media consumption devices it can be said that they are also good at a facilitating a wider variety of activities. Anyway, media consumption devices enable and are devoted to the consumption of media: the devouring of books, magazines, videos. Devices that are perfect for our ‘consumer culture.’

When I was a young pup, my mom frequently took my sister and me to the library. We were voracious readers, and on a warm summer day there was an equal chance that I’d be inside reading as there was that I’d be outside imagining that I was a part of the worlds to which I’d been introduced via those books. To this day, I recall strong memories associated with reading books, the same way a particular scent or the opening phrase of a song can transport us to another time or place.

For me, it comes down to quality of experience. I still read a lot, and I do it in different ways – but personally, it’s the online content that runs the risk of over-saturating me. Due to the ease of access, I find myself reading through so much stuff so quickly that the content starts to lose meaning and become undifferentiated as it all slops around in my head. The volume of content and how frictionless it has become to access it are what make living in the future so great – and that goes for even the simplest eReader devices, on which you can store many books and periodicals – but, it would seem, at the cost of allowing ourselves to carefully consider the material.

By embarking on the journey of reading a physical book, we build a relationship with it. Some of my favorite books are ‘discoveries’ from my local used bookstore. Books are tied to specific periods in our lives. They accompany us on our lunch breaks and on buses and planes. They are not interchangeable. It was this book that I took with me on last summer’s road trip. It was this book I was reading when I was looking for jobs. I like to read these when I’m in bed with a cold. Even looking at the cover of a book of an edition you once owned causes a spark of recognition, reminding you of that companionship. Is there any feeling that’s more satisfying than reading a chapter at the coffee shop and allowing yourself to pause and contemplate what you’ve just read, without any distraction other than the environment in which you sit? Perhaps it’s telling that ‘reading’ is the last activity to be mentioned during recent advertisements for the Kindle Fire.