Death of Books?

While watching Live with Regis and Kelly last week, Kelly featured a book, It’s A Book by Lane Smith. The book focuses on a monkey who is reading a book. The donkey sitting across from him asks if it can Tweet or connect to the WiFi. The monkey’s response is always “it’s a book.” Lane Smith addresses an issue brought about by the new technologies of the Kindle, Nook and iPad. An individual can download a book off the internet and upload it on their book reader. There are many advantages to the book readers like size, and accessibility. The readers are about the size of a medium size book and are about a centimeter thick. They have the capacity to hold more than one book on them, and a person can download whatever book he wants off the internet. A trip to the book store is not necessary. There are disadvantages to the book readers also. How are you supposed to annotate a book when you can’t put pen to paper? Some of my best ideas come from annotating books. You write down a thought and then more thoughts come from your initial idea. What about that new book smell? You don’t get that anymore with the book readers. You get that smell of plastic or burning when it overheats.

Actual books with pages will remain my choice of how I want to read. I don’t mind that they are heavy at times. I love looking at my bookshelf and seeing that it’s filled with books that I’ve read in the past. Each book has a memory attached to it. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse reminds me of my month long journey throughout Vietnam. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares reminds me of middle school summers. Let’s try to keep the books alive and continue the memories attached to them.

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2 Comments (+add yours?)

  1. jessicaanncrabb
    Sep 14, 2010 @ 12:32:37

    I’m such a hypocrite when it comes to books vs. book readers, because I love every book in my collection, and I love being able to take them off my shelf and reread them and think of the memories they possess, but I’m addicted to my iPad. I’ve spent way too much money just because its so easy to find exactly the book I want and then download it and start reading immediately. Coming from a town with no bookstore within 50 miles, being able to find something new without the long drive to a bookstore makes my opinion on the subject torn, because I’m so used to taking advantage of the best parts of both physical books and digital books.

    Reply

  2. msaha3
    Sep 21, 2010 @ 10:13:46

    I totally agree too! I love my books. I even brought some to Tech because I love looking over at my book shelf and being able to pick out my choice of what I want to read. I hate how the internet had made books so easy to reach. I think soon that the internet will offer summaries and shorter versions of hard copy books because our generation is so concerned with time. I feel like the idea of pleasure reading has been corrupted by having the ability to read anything. When I was little, I had to go find the book I wanted which made me read it. Now if I pick up a book on the internet, I have no passion to read it because I just lazily looked it up on the internet.

    Reply

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