Book vs. Kindle: Okay, We Can Stop Now

To this day, with all the book-chat I find myself reading or engaging in online (particularly social media), I am still (though don't know why) surprised and a bit annoyed when someone brings up the Kindle - or Nook, or e-reader in general - like it's some evil harbinger of doom determined to bring about Armageddon for the printed book ever since Oprah introduced the world to it years ago. Each time I hear this argument I am reminded of my mother, even many more years ago, who wouldn't touch the first microwave oven (about the size and weight of an air conditioner) brought into our home by my father, because she was sure it would give her cancer.

I've been reading since childhood, say 150 years or so now, and even as fascinated as I was, watching Oprah unveil Kindle to the world on one of her Christmastime "My Favorite Things" shows back in the day - newspaper and magazine subscriptions at your fingertips in seconds? you can finish the first book in a series and be reading the second one a minute later?? - to me Kindle potentially signaled the death knell of my beloved bound books as well, and it would take a few years (plus over a year of debate and research, trying to decide between Kindle and Nook) to finally invest in one. Now, maybe ... nine years later? ... I own three Kindles 9with somewhere around 2,000 books stored on them. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Ahh, but here's the kicker - and what most people still treating e-readers like leprosy don't seem to understand: YOU CAN STILL READ REAL BOOKS. Yes, that's right, you can have BOTH in your life, and quite frankly most e-reader owners do! Unlike what many Kindle haters suggest, you do not have to choose between them; like children, you can love both equally. And I won't go into all the conveniences/advantages of owning a Kindle, because most people know them already and doing so usually sends Kindle haters into fits.

But I wanted to do this post to share something I recently learned. First, I have never, ever thought books were in danger of extinction because of e-readers. That's simply not true, and while my heart breaks for every brick-and-mortar store that's closed up, hard-copy books still sell like crazy and independent bookstores are enjoying a resurgence. So no, no matter what the witch hunters shout, THE BOOK is never going to be threatened by e-readers.

What I wanted to share is that quite recently I learned - by accident - a very important reason why. 

The obvious reasons to love a real book, of course, are known to any book lover: the heft of holding a real book, the smell of a new book (is there ANYTHING like it in the world?!), the opportunity to lose yourself in the tranquility of your favorite bookstore - even being able to annotate or take notes right there in the margins (though you can do this with Kindle in digital form, many people LIKE the intimacy of note-taking, etc. in their beloved book). But as I recently have begun to pick up hard-copy books again, as well as reading on Kindle, I am reminded of how since childhood, whenever I put my bookmark in after reading for the day, I would also check out the part of the bookmark sticking out of the top, turning the book this way and that and noting with pride that heck yeah, I made progress today. Can't do that with Kindle (you can bookmark your page, but obviously no visual). 

Even more importantly, I realized that with Kindle, the simple fact is that every book you read looks exactly the same. Assuming you have the font size/style set to what you like, every single book you read on Kindle (and when I say Kindle in this post, I mean any e-reader) looks exactly like every other single book you have on Kindle. No variety, like you get with real books, where you might read a 300-page book now but then a 550-page chunker after that, the margins and font style/size varying, hitting home the fact that book's an all-new reading experience. Maybe it's me, but I found that's what I miss right now with Kindle books over hard-copy ones: the variety. The feel that, each time I finish a book, that adventure is over and I am setting sail on a new adventure ... as opposed to just swiping to another page that looks exactly like the last 3,000 pages I read.

So no, real books aren't going anywhere. And the Kindle haters need to stop hating as hard as they do when they even bring up the subject. To me, we bookaholics should always be celebrating reading, period, no matter in what form someone is doing it. Especially here in the U.S., where so many don't even read a book a year, and illiteracy remains an issue. Bottom line: you do you, long as you keep reading - share that love of reading with anyone around you who will listen (kids/young people especially) - and never criticize someone for what they are reading (or how they're reading it) so much as praise them for taking that adventure.