For a while, I didn’t know what it was about the whole e-book thing that bugged me. I mean, songs without a CD is one thing. CDs aren’t particularly attractive or aesthetically pleasing – my apologies to those of you who still proudly display your music collection in your living room with an alphabetized dust-collecting shelf. If anything, CDs are bulky and awkward. The coolest part of a physical CD is often the little paper booklet inside of it. The case itself is never anything to look at. Now, vinyl records are cool to look at, certainly. They are a little big, but I admit that they’re making a comeback. But remember, you don’t look at songs. You listen to them. So it doesn’t bug me when I can’t physically hold my song collection aside from holding it vicariously through my phone.
This works for movies, too. The cases for Blu-Rays, DVDs, and so on can be pretty cool, and a movie library on a bookshelf is a bit nicer to look at than a CD collection – again, my apologies to the CD aficionados. That said, the case itself isn’t an important part of the movie. If my entire movie collection was on a jump drive, my only concern would be making sure I didn’t lose it. It looks like movies are heading the way of music, too. With Netflix, Hulu, and the Disney streaming service set to come out in late 2019, I wouldn’t be surprised if physical copies of movies were all but extinct in the next ten years.
But putting books in that same digital world? There’s something different about that, and I think it has to do with the difference between a physical book and a CD or DVD. Books have been around far longer than plastic casings. We’ve been using books for hundreds and hundreds of years, and in that time they’ve become something of their own. They’ve become mediums for artistic expression – works of art regardless of their contents.
Just think of all the different covers that meet your eyes when you walk into a bookstore. Think of the old hardcover books with golden letters embossed on the front, and intricate detailing along the spine. And not just the look, but the feel of a book. The feeling of leather. The little grooves made by the lettering on the cover. The texture of the paper. And not just the feel, but the sound of a book. When you flip the pages really fast and get that prippity-prippity-prippity noise. The satisfying sound of a page slowly turning. The heavy thud you hear when you put a big book down on a table. And not just the sound, but the smell of a book. It might sound weird, but there’s something to be said for the scent of old paper or the crisp smell of a brand new book.
Libraries are majestic, glorious buildings. They are beacons of knowledge, of enlightenment, of human achievement. A loaded bookshelf in a home is as much a decoration as a place to share information. Books add culture, character, and class to a room. You can see the heart of a person by looking at their book collection. Heck...we haven’t even touched on the content of those books.
No, books do not belong on a jump drive any more than a painting belongs in your phone instead of on a wall. Sure, you could argue that you’re essentially getting the same information either way, but look at it this way. If you could take a pill that gives you all the nutrients and vitamins you need for the day instead of eating real food, you’d be getting the same thing as usual, essentially. And yet, it’s not the same. It’s not even close. When you read an e-book, I want to be clear when I say that you are certainly reading the same book and getting the same material. But the reading experience itself has fundamentally changed. You haven’t taken reading out of the book. You’ve taken the book out of the reading.
----------
If you're looking for a real book, click here.