Me and My Ereader

I bought an ereader a couple of weeks back and almost immediately grew very attached to it. I'm definitely sold. Ereaders are still very controversial among some bookish people (many librarians, for example) who see them as a harbinger of the end of life-as-we-know-it. Meanwhile tech-ish people see them as limited and boring (compared, say, to an ipad).

I've encountered both these responses. And I think they're both right, in their way. The trend in book sales is very clear. Ebooks are taking a larger and larger chunk of the market. In other words, the market for printed books is shrinking drastically. The librarians are right. We're entering a new era for readers, and that is a sad thing for lovers of books. I get that.

But the tech-ish ones are right too. Ereaders feel like old technology already. Most of them are black-and-white only, so as a platform for images they actually represent a significant step backward from traditonal printing (so far). That they do only one thing well--provide a platform for the printed word--makes them more akin (in a way) to washing machines than to digital technology generally.

I mean, you can't play colorful interactive games on them, check your email (not yet anyway), text your friends, or map your route to that funky now cafe downtown. But most of the people I've encountered who are bored by the whole concept of the ereader are probably not people who would consider sitting down and reading a 700 page tome. They're multi-tasking people who are tied to their smart phones and ipads, eager to download the next great application. But the very reason they're disinterested in ereaders is exactly what makes ereaders appealing to me.

Ereaders are quiet little un-busy machines, focused on their one simple task. They're not dazzling. They're not really impressive in the way that many new gadgets are. They're for readers--people who run their eyes along endless strings of text for hours on end. In other words, they specialize in providing a platform for long-term digital reading, not for digital flitting from one app to another. That's why they already feel like old technology. They feel, in many ways, like a book! They're about focus, not versatility. They're not flashy, but capable of conveying to the mind of the user the thoughts, mental images, and linguistic engagement, that all authors intend.

I have no doubt that the manufacturers will continue to add new levels of interactivity to these devices (The Nook Color, for example, which advertises itself as something that you can play Angry Birds on . . . whoopee!). But that is to mar the beautiful simplicity of the device. Just give me a good book, whether printed or digital, any day.

Random Saturday

Ah, Saturday!

And a 3-day weekend, to boot!  [Patriot's Day weekend.  It's a Maine and Massachusetts thing.]

Having our eldest, Nate, back in the house for a few days has been nice. We'll be celebrating his birthday (which was yesterday) on Monday, since he's been out "gigging" in the remoter parts of Maine this weekend.  [That way, too, we can decouple his birthday from 3 negatives: tax day, the sinking of the Titanic, and the death of Abraham Lincoln.  Sheesh!]

I'm really taking to this ereader thingie like a fish to water. I downloaded a couple of free Bible translations (ESV, HCSB) from B&N, and an old book called Bible Holiness. So it's pretty obvious, I like free stuff.

I'm sitting in the library right now. A quiet place full of printed books. But most of the people here are plugging away on computers.

It's National Poetry Month, so they've got a special display of poetry books, from which I selected Mary Oliver's Owl and Other Fantasies. Mary Oliver is one of my three favorite poets, for sure.

The downside of etexts on these ereaders: illustrations (maps, for example) are almost useless. Also, at least in the book I'm reading just now, you get a lot of typos. A lot. It gives you the sense that the makers are slipshod, careless, but I suppose it's all to be blamed on the software or something.

Still, the traditionalist's nostalgia for printed text on paper seems overdone to me. I run into this a lot among library people. But isn't it the words themselves, not the technology by which they're reproduced, which transport us? And that's why we love books, mainly. The words, conveying as they do all kinds of excitement, deep thinking, emotion, and the sense of dramatic motion . . . simply getting caught up in a story . . . these things transport us. Right?

Here's the start of a Mary Oliver poem to leave you with. The poem is called, "Herons in Winter in a Frozen Marsh."

All winter

two blue herons

hunkered in the frozen marsh,

like two columns of blue smoke. 

Ereading Update

Well, I bought myself a Nook. It arrived this week and I've spent a couple of days just kind of getting friendly with it.

The device came with Bram Stoker's Dracula and Louisa May Alcott's Little Women already loaded. I downloaded a couple of free Bible translations to start with, bought a 99 cent book from Barnes and Noble (just for practice)... Consider Phlebas, by Iaian Banks. I also downloaded the first ebook that caught my eye from my local library website, that being Michael Korda's Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia, which should be an interesting story.

Bottom line, I'm loving this little doohickey.