The Future of Reading

Thanks to all of you that stopped me in the halls this week to tell me that you had read the blog entry about the Twilight Saga. Make sure (when you have the time) to write your comments below with that entry. I always want to hear what you are thinking!

I know that I normally give a comment about a book. I am right in the middle of reading a good one, so look next week for my comments on that. However, I felt that I had to comment on an article that I had read in a professional journal this week. Please don't stop reading now! Just bear with me. It was a fairly optimist view of how electronic media will revolutionise our reading experience. When we use our electronic readers (i.e. Kindle/iPods) perhaps one day we will see multi-media images of the characters acting out the scenes described in the story, and appropriate music will play in the background. With apparent glee, the author of the article discussed the brave new multi-media world of reading, and the full emersion, sensory experience that is to come. The article concluded with the prediction that someday we would see the death of books in print. All I could think, is "Holy cow (or something more colorful), I hope this guy is wrong."

Don't get me wrong. I am all for progress. I do think that the future of reference is electronic, and so do the publishers. Grolier has all ready stopped publishing its print encyclopedia, and every year Britannica threatens to do the same, but they haven't yet. Atlas's are slowly being replaced by GPS. When was the last time you looked in a print dictionary for how to spell a word? But is the book really going the way of the dinosaur?

When I read a good book, it ALL READY IS a full sensory experience for me. I no longer am aware that I am turning pages. The story flows forth, and the passage of time no longer has meaning (have you ever looked up from a book, and realized that hours have passed by, and you hardly noticed). I have never experienced this with an electronic reader. I am usually fidgeting with font size, and dealing with eyestrain. I don't need a reader to show me characters on the screen, I all ready have them in my head when I read a book. I know what they look like. I can hear their voices. I love the way a new book smells. I love that paperbacks leave black ink on my fingers. I love that I can tell how much more a story is left, by the thickness of the book from where I stopped. How sad my world would be if print books left it all together.

This Christmas break I brought my children to see my parents in Maine. One night, while looking for a bedtime story, my daughter choose a book from the small stack of Christmas stories that my mother keeps on an end table during the holidays. The book is an illustrated version of the poem "A Christmas Party." My mother read this book to us every Christmas eve when I was a child. It had been a gift from my grandmother to me for my first Christmas, when I was only 8 weeks old. As my daughter went to open the book, the stiching gave way and all the pages fell out. Two of my three sisters happened to be there that night, and as we picked up the pages to put them back, we all recited the poem, from memory together. We were able to put the pages back in order in no time. On the first page, in her distictive looping cursive, is the note that my grandmother wrote to me to wish me a Merry Christmas that year. My grandmother is now 92, with hands so crippled from arthritis that they are no longer able to hold a pen, but I would recognise her hand writing any where. On one page of the book there is a yellow stain where my sister Sarah spilled juice on it one year. On the back cover there are a few scribbles, the result of my youngest sister Amanda's artistic expression. It occured to me, that this little book had left a lasting impression on all of us, and, as it turned out, we had left an impression on it. It was no longer a book that told only a small Christmas poem, but it also told stories of our family as well. I doubt that I will ever have such an experience with my Kindle.

What is the future of reading and books? Time will tell. I am encouraged to know that so many of you are out there reading, and let me know that you have read some of the books that I have reccommended, and disagree with me on what I had to say about some of them. But to loose books in print to electronic delivery would sadden me greatly. Not only will we lose the books, but maybe we will lose some of our own stories as well. Let me know what you think...