Gutenberg Is The Bibliophiliac’s Pimp, You Know

I’ve entered the electronic book age, albeit on the cheap:  I don’t have a Kindle or similar device, but Amazon has a free application that functions similar to the Kindle.  I downloaded the application and made my first purchase of an e-book (Paris 1919:  Six Months That Changed the World) soon thereafter.

There are some things I like about the e-book phenomenon.  For one thing, I find that I am reading more; considering how much time I spend staring at my computer screen, it feels good to actually put that time to good use.  And speaking of time, it took literally seconds for me to download a book of around 450 pages, immediately after I purchased it – I didn’t have to pay for shipping, or wait a week for delivery.  Because I can browse for titles on line, I can also read the reviews posted by people who had already purchased the books, giving me a little insight into whether or not a book is worth my time (and money).  Eventually I imagine I’ll have a little travelling electronic library – which is another advantage of this medium:  I have a small house, without a lot of room for bookshelves, and there is no way for me to fit in all the books I’d like to in the available shelf space.

So those are the positives.  But there’s a major negative that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to overlook, and I wager my complaint is a common one among book lovers.

“Book lover” – a wonderful term, because in essence, that’s what a book becomes:  our constant companion, for an undetermined length of time, one with whom we share stolen moments when we are otherwise alone, in a private place, where we can submerge ourselves into the embrace of those alluring printed pages.  To hold and read a book is to experience a very special intellectual intimacy, but there is a smidgen of the physical as well; nothing quite matches the feel and smell of a book.

E-books are practical, and convenient, and they are undoubtedly the wave of the future as regards the mass-marketing of text.  But they’ll never engender the romance and excitement one gets from holding a real, printed book.