Another month; another sleek and seductive device arrives in shops. I can't even get past Amazon's home page without being smacked in the face by the breathtaking product shots of their "All-New Kindle", which is modestly priced at £109 in the UK for the Wi-Fi version. OK, I may have exaggerated a little there, because the one in their picture does look like the dull, greyish and distinctly pedestrian cousin of Apple's gleaming iPad. But who cares about the lack of sex appeal, when you can take your Kindle to the beach, or lounge around the bathroom enjoying that much-vaunted "Battery Life of One Month."
Up until now I've been highly skeptical about the e-book revolution. I do love the convenience of my iPod with that cover flow display that puts all my favorite tunes right at my finger tips. But, as a bibliophile, I am still happy to settle for carrying around just one paperback book at a time. Not everyone shares my reverence for the printed word. Earlier this week, The London Evening Standard, ran a piece called "Living the iLife", which promised to clue us in on what "today's smart movers" were doing with their laptops.
The unfortunately named Mark Prigg describes the radical, stripped-down lifestyle of young, London-based entrepreneur Hermione Way. Apparently, she is one of the "digital minimalists" who are perfecting the art of living without clutter and running their lives from a selection of gadgets — MacBook, iPad, iPhone. She has already junked her CDs and DVDs and says "I'm in the process of chucking out all my books as I can read them on my iPad."
To borrow what Urban Dictionary calls "an irritating piece of chatroom vernacular," OMG! This woman is clearly one of those poor benighted souls who doesn't appreciate the deep satisfaction of owning, living amongst and — yes, Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker — smelling books. You cannot enjoy a meaningful, lifelong relationship with a collection of digital files — no matter how good the contrast of the e-ink screen.
Then it dawned on me that Hermione might be right in thinking of books as something to read and then just throw away like yesterday's newspaper. Of course they're not exactly cheap — roughly £7.99 for the average paperback — but they feel less substantial. It's partly a matter of perception: if you've grown up in the age of free cover mounts, or seen Dan Brown's greatest hits piled high in supermarkets along with the baked beans and loo rolls, you could be forgiven for not regarding books as objects to treasure.
The decline of the book's status has been compounded by deteriorating standards in editing, typesetting and printing. One of the reasons I now prefer second-hand books over new ones is that I believe I'm acquiring something with a bit of character. The slightly tanned pages and occasional bit of broken or misaligned type make that old Penguin edition of The Great Gatsby unique. On the other hand, my 2007 paperback of Richard Ford's novel The Lay of the Land runs to more than 700 pages and is printed on what the publisher boasts is "100 per cent post-consumer waste recycled paper." Green it may be, but this book looks and feels like crap. To add insult to injury, the back cover is emblazoned with the usual hyperbolic nonsense from critics who, unlike me, were not defeated by Ford's latest futile attempt at The Great American Novel.
Article comments
1 - Michele
I have a Nook, not Kindle. I like it because Barnes & Noble it isn't as proprietary as Amazon, and they offer over a million titles for their Nook, as opposed to Kindle. I was a little leery, too, about getting a reader because I also like the feel and smell of books. I'm having issues with destroying more trees, though. Another factor is that I live in a small studio apartment and space is limited. The only paper books I'm now collecting are ones that are not available, yet, as an e-book, are hard to find, or are in some way important to me. Everything else is going on my Nook.
2 - Susannah Straughan
Michele, I hadn't heard of the Nook, but it certainly looks like a handsome alternative to the Kindle. I also have issues with shelf space, so half of my collection is now stacked so high or so far back on the shelves that I rarely see some of those treasured volumes. You're right: it's time to be more selective about the books we buy. It will be interesting to see what impact this has on the way new titles are issued and priced.
3 - El Bicho
I'm happy with physical books and likely will be for the remainder of my days