No ebooks for me: Reading is about more than simply absorbing data

By David McElroy · August 16, 2013

Some people love ebook readers. They love the fact that they can have dozens or hundreds of books with them on a small device. With some of those gadgets, the power can last for days or weeks. You can order any book you want and have it immediately instead of going to a store or waiting for it to be shipped for you. That all sounds great. So why don’t I want one?

I’m thinking about this today because of a discussion that took place on my Facebook page Thursday morning. I posted a picture of a tongue-in-cheek display in a bookstore window. It listed the advantages of “real books” over ebooks, pointing out that they don’t need batteries or software upgrades. And so forth.

More than two dozen people quickly “liked” the picture, some just because they liked a clever promotion and some because they prefer “real books,” as I do. A few people chimed in to argue the superiority of ebooks, explaining that you can get PDFs of books and that you can carry lots of books with you, etc.

Here’s the thing. I understand the technical advantages of ebooks. It’s not that I’ve somehow missed the facts of how they work or what they’re capable of. I don’t need to be “educated” about them. It’s simply that other things matter more to me. For my needs and preferences, real books on real paper matter.

For me — and maybe for you — reading is a much deeper and more tactile experience than just scanning words on a screen. Yes, the words on the page matter a lot, but it’s much more. The feel of the paper matters. It’s a very sensory part of it. Different types of paper feel different and evoke different responses. A cheap paperback with coarse paper feels different — and produces different feelings — than the expensive paper of an leather-bound hardback. I like both, but I associate the two with very different things. And there are various other grades of paper with which I associate various other things.

The smell of the book matters. New books smell a certain way. Books you’ve had for awhile that haven’t been opened because they’ve been sitting on a your bookshelf smell different than when they were new. Older books — whether in a library or in a used bookshop — have yet another smell. It feels almost as though books are telling you who they are and what their stories are — their histories — when you pick them up and feel them and smell them.

When you spend years with these physical books, they’re not just collections of digital words. They feel like living beings that are alive. Every time I think about this, I think about Professor Faber trying to explain to Guy Montag why books were so important to him in “Fahrenheit 451.” If you can read that book and understand what Faber is saying about books, you’ll understand why I want my physical (and very imperfect) library.

I understand that ebook readers — either dedicated devices such as a Kindle or a general-purpose tablet such as an iPad — are useful at times. There are times when you just need searchable technical material. That’s important and it’s valuable sometimes. But it’s not what I really mean when I think of reading — the kind of reading that has come to mean so much to me over the years.

I love books. I love them for the ideas they contain and for the worlds they take me to. But I also love them for the tactile experience of reading them. I love what they physically have meant to me all of my life. I love how they remind me of reading under covers with a flashlight as a child when I was supposed to be asleep. I love how they remind me of the many paperback science fiction novels I tucked inside textbooks to read during classes. I love how they remind me of staying awake through the night many times — thinking over and over again that I’d read just one more chapter. And then another. And another. And another. I was too intoxicated by what I was reading to stop.

This is my experience with real books made out of paper and cloth and cardboard and ink — and I love it. And I love people who share my experience and understand the emotional connection I have to the paper and ink.

I understand why you might love your ebook reader. I don’t mind that. I’m not asking you to make my choice. But don’t think that I simply fail to understand how they work or what their advantages are. I do understand. But I understand something about my relationship with books that goes far deeper than my relationship with a tablet and touchscreen will ever go.

I love real books made of paper and ink for what they’ve meant to me. They’re my friends. I don’t want to give them up.

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We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

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