Readers
of e-books already know this tune. Asked about reading text files on a
handheld device, defenders of print proclaim their love for the printed
word, the feel of the paper, the experience of holding, owning and
reading a physical book, with the sometimes not-so-subtle implication
that anyone settling for a text file is somehow less of a reader.In today's News-Journal there is an article about making textbooks more affordable, with a mention of placing textbooks online or offering them in ebook form. Accompanying this article is a short interview with Catherine Golden, a professor of English at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and author of several books including "Posting It -- The Victorian Revolution in Writing," in which she offers just such an opinion of ebooks.
"While I am aware that people --including my college-age sons -- increasingly read a lot of textual material on-screen," she said, "as a scholar, I savor the physical book. Books matter to me, and I would be willing to forego other things to buy a printed version of a book. I care about book jackets, the quality and placement of the illustrations, and the look of the typeface on a page. While I am comfortable reading short texts on-screen, I like to underline words, write in the margins of a book, and keep a record of important scenes and quotations in the back pages of a book, particularly one I am using for teaching. I teach with printed books and like my students to bring their books to class and to do close readings of Victorian texts and illustrations central to long multi-plot novels like 'Vanity Fair' or 'David Copperfield.'"
She emphasizes "as a scholar" several times, and there seems to be some conflation of "online books" and "e-books," but overall this is a fair description of the appeal of printed books for many people, myself included.
A physical book is something beyond just the words between the covers; it's the setting for a reading experience. Just the act of settling down into an overstuffed armchair with a big book and a hot drink can instantly put you into the mood for sinking into someone else's world for a little while. A physical book is something you can take pleasure in, just seeing it on your shelf. There's a triumphant joy in finding a book you've been hunting for years, buried in the stacks of a musty used bookstore. You can loan a physical book to friends, donate it to a library for others to enjoy, have it signed by the author, and pass it down to your children as a treasured heirloom. And I can appreciate, as a scholar, the physical impact an original work can have on someone studying the book in the context of the times in which it was written.
Thing is, as a reader? I don't always care as much.
Sometimes -- most times -- I just want to read the story. I'm not especially interested in the format and I don't require the additional stagecraft to get me in the mood. Most of my reading is not actually performed curled up in a chair or sitting comfortably at a desk. I want books that come with me wherever I go.
As an example, with all the publicity over the new "Sherlock Holmes" movie these past few weeks I became interested in revisiting Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories about the intrepid detective. And, as it happens, I possess a leather-bound copy of the complete works, given to me by a friend as a gift some 25 years ago. It's a handsome volume which contains not only the original illustrations from The Strand Magazine by Sidney Paget but the somewhat more obscure illustrations by George Hutchinson for "A Study in Scarlet" and the illustrations to "The Sign of the Four" by Frank H. Townshend. The text is presented in double rows, much like the original presentation.
It's still on my shelf, looking handsome. Instead, while we were in a restaurant after seeing the movie, I downloaded the text of the stories from Project Gutenberg onto my iPod Touch, where I do the bulk of my reading these days. It never occurred to me to wait until I got home and could dig out the printed copy. And yet somehow, despite the lack of paper under my fingers or the smell of old glue in my nose, I had no problem at all losing myself in Holmes' world.As a reader, I want reading to be as convenient for me as possible. I want dozens, hundreds of books with me at all times, with thousands more ready at a moment's notice. I want to keep a fictional gateway near me at all times for me to step through whenever I have a few uninterrupted minutes, whether it's my lunch hour or in a doctor's office or on a bus or stuck in traffic.
Like Professor Golden I also make notes and annotations, and some e-book readers even allow those to be exported. Books open precisely where I left off, no matter how many I am currently reading. I can adjust text size, font, backlighting and color for easier reading in different environments. I can easily search for text, a task that's a bit trickier in, say, my 808-page, 12-lb Sherlock Holmes compendium. And I can slip the entire saga of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous creation into my shirt pocket.
Printed books are a treasure. I own thousands, on my shelves and in storage. Many of them, like the Sherlock Holmes book, are also tangible memories of friends and old times. I'm not hoping that everyone adopts e-book reading or that print books should ever go away.
I just want scholars such as Professor Golden to know that reading without the trappings of print is still reading.
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But sometimes publishers want to draw some attention to a book, or boost its numbers, or get you hooked on a series by just giving you one -- a successful technique adapted by libraries and drug dealers -- and that's when you can score. Right now, as a little encouragement to pick up Tim Dorsey's upcoming new book "Gator A G-Go" (due out January 26, 2010), the 11th book in Dorsey's series about lovable serial killer Serge A. Storms and his drug-addled sidekick Coleman, you can get the 10th book, "Atomic Lobster" for free, with extra material added.
Castle's "Heat Wave," the purported beginning of a new series by the best-selling author based on Det. Beckett, the "real" police detective he's shadowing (played by Stana Katic), is a major plot point in the series as its creation provides the reason he's allowed to play with the police in the first place. In various episodes we've seen him writing it, promoting it, attending launch parties for it, and referencing actual passages.
Then there's Hank Moody's underground bestseller "God Hates Us All." Published in September by Simon Spotlight Entertainment under the name Hank Moody ("with Jonathan Grotenstein") this is the book that, in the raunchy comedy series Californication, launched Moody into the limelight before years of writers' block and interpersonal relationship problems yanked him back out. Over and over in the series we are told how amazing the book was, how many lives it changed, and one character in the second season praises it with: "that was your Gatsby!" 
You've done the rebaking thing. You've done the making-turkey-sandwiches-for-a-week thing. You've created quiches and stir fry and gumbos out of the slowly shrinking heap of leftovers until now you just wish you had taken the whole family to McDonald's on Thanksgiving like your son wanted you to. So what do you do with the rest of the rapidly decaying foodstuff in your fridge?