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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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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