Another Thursday is upon us, and that means it is time for yet another Booking Through Thursday prompt. What will it be this week, you ask? Here you go…Prompt: With the advent (and growing popularity) of eBooks, I’m seeing more and more articles about how much “better” they can be, because they have the option to be interactive … videos, music, glossaries … all sorts of little extra goodies to help “enhance” your reading experience, rather like listening to the Director’s commentary on a DVD of your favorite movie. How do you feel about that possibility? Does it excite you in a cutting-edge kind of way? Or does it chill you to the bone because that’s not what reading is ABOUT?
I honestly think that the hysteria surrounding the supposed “death” of print literature is greatly exaggerated. Sure, I have engaged in lamenting the passing of print, but as the months have passed, I have come to realize that lamenting the “death” of printed literature amounts to nothing more than the fetishization of printed books. It’s not the books that are important, the pages, the covers, the inks, the papers … it’s the ideas that they carry and eReaders carry those ideas just as well as print books. The interactive aspect of eReaders like the Kindle and Nook and iPad are nothing more than bells and whistles that do not, in my opinion, affect reading anymore than the internet or TV does to print books.
I have a Kindle, and if anything it has made reading easier. It certainly made my life as a grad student much easier since I could store and read PDFs and Word documents on it as well as eBooks. But I’ve strayed from the question at hand. I don’t think that the interactivity really excites me about my Kindle (though the instant dictionary is helpful) its more the convenience of the device that excites me. The fact that I can carry around 200+ books, the fact that I can have all of the research I need for a paper in one place (without having to carry around multiple printed PDF articles), the fact that I can read samples of books before deciding if I want to continue … it makes it really convenient.
Sure, I have decried the electronic revolution, but I’ve come to realize that eReaders are not the end of print books … as I’ve said, reading is about ideas and stories and characters and eReaders convey those just as easily as print books, flashy interactivity or not.
I have a Kindle, and if anything it has made reading easier. It certainly made my life as a grad student much easier since I could store and read PDFs and Word documents on it as well as eBooks. But I’ve strayed from the question at hand. I don’t think that the interactivity really excites me about my Kindle (though the instant dictionary is helpful) its more the convenience of the device that excites me. The fact that I can carry around 200+ books, the fact that I can have all of the research I need for a paper in one place (without having to carry around multiple printed PDF articles), the fact that I can read samples of books before deciding if I want to continue … it makes it really convenient.
Sure, I have decried the electronic revolution, but I’ve come to realize that eReaders are not the end of print books … as I’ve said, reading is about ideas and stories and characters and eReaders convey those just as easily as print books, flashy interactivity or not.
1 comments:
Well said, although I totally disagree! :-) The pages, the covers, the inks, the papers... to me that is a big part of the pleasure of reading. Fetishization? Guilty as charged!
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