For
the majority of my life, I have only read paper books. In fact, I didn't even use computers until I was age 16, and most of my time in
front of the screen was devoted to typing and other tasks, not reading novel-length books. It was only until two or three years ago that I started reading
on my laptop. I used the Mobipocket e-book reader. This system satisfied me for
short spurts only. I had to fiddle with the laptop, load the book, find a spot
away from bright sunshine. It ended up being my lunch hour activity since I
usually eat lunch alone.
Then
the Kindle came out and I did buy a few books like dictionaries to consult on
my computer – but not to read them. As a translator, is quite handy to have
digital information that you can search, copy and paste anywhere. Getting out
of my office chair and leafing through paper books is becoming increasingly
less frequent occurrence for me. It is much faster and more convenient to have
all of my information either online or on screen and ready to go.
However,
it must admit that what is handy and convenient when working is not always so
when I am reading for pleasure. Paper books are far more enchanting to me
because I can heft them and feel the pages tickle my fingertip when I turn them.
The very physical quality of paper books means that they belong on the shelf,
in a drawer, on a nightstand–somewhere where you know they will be when you
wake up in the morning. I have very fond memories of books at the Green Lake
Library in Seattle, and I know right where they are (or at least where they
were 20 or 30 years ago).
Another
aspect of paper books is that, at least for me, there is a certain undefinable
holiness about them. I would feel terrible if I saw a book burning. It wouldn't
matter if I had read it or if I was interested in reading it, just the fact
that it was being destroyed would pain me. With an e-book, I couldn't say the
same thing. If someone were to delete an e-book from a computer, it just
wouldn't have the same effect. After all, what is an e-book when it's
"closed"? Where are the words? In what form are they represented? I'm
sure someone has an explanation, but it's not the same as knowing that a
printed book continues to have the same printed words in it when it is closed.
You can't even really "close" an e-book.
Now
that I own a Kindle, I use it often, especially with books that I do not have
in paper format and that I do not wish to acquire at a hefty price. It is a
device of convenience. Since I live far away from where English-language books
are sold in mass quantities, I'm overbowled by the Kindle and what I can shop
for at the Kindle store. No longer do I have to pay high prices for books and
shipping in order to get them to Chile. Just as the Kindle store advertises, I
am able to receive any book in the catalog in under a minute on my Kindle.
When
I read books in Spanish, I almost always like to read them in print form.
Living in Chile, a Spanish-speaking country, books and Spanish are readily
available, and though not all of them are cheap, if they are worth reading, I
sometimes buy them. It is interesting, but the Spanish language selection at
the Kindle store is nowhere near the size of the English language selection. In
fact, there are many books in Chile that cannot be found in e-book format. I
think that people here and in the rest of Latin America are more interested in
reading physical books than they are e-books.
The
good news is that for the time being, there is no need to decide which method
to stick to. When I want to read a paper book, I read a paper book and when I want
to read on the Kindle, I read on the Kindle. It's that simple.
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