They [Think] Like Me, They [Really Think] Like Me!
With thanks to Sally Field for the title.
But really. After reading this from Shelf Awareness today, my heart did an honest-to-goodness leap.
I’d been thinking. Could I (and a handful of other horse-loving, dinosaur-tending, old-school book lovers) be the only one for whom that smell of binding and tactile sensation of pages mattered?
Am I the only one who’s less in love with technology and gadgets, at least when it comes to pleasures like reading?
The only one who doesn’t have a cell phone, for crying out loud?
(Oops. Did I just say that to all my readers and for the digital record, may it last until the apocalypse at least?)
OK. Maybe everyone but me does have a cell phone and consider it useful. (Heck, even I acknowledge its use. I just don’t want one.)
But there are more people than simply the Luddites who might value a book over the supposedly new, improved, flat, electronically lit version that Jeff and Steve would like to shove into as many grabby hands as will take it.
I don’t mean to put down these innovators in any way. The fact that they stand to earn a buck from the genius that is Amazon–and Apple–is just the American way.
A’s for effort all around.
But leave me my B.
And acknowledge that for a good number of people out there, this B might forever come first.
Ha! I don’t have a cell phone either. I don’t want to be that available! And frankly, there isn’t a reason–yes we have two teens (well a teen and a nearly teen) but you see… I never have the car… my husband who has the car to DO SOMETHING about any emergency is the one who needs the cell phone.
I think everyone who grew up really loving books likes the REAL THING. That may change as younger generations grow up loving a story read on a reader, but I think we have a few decades, anyway.
And yes… the Apocalypse… what on earth will there be to read when there is no more electricity and the batteries are gone and all the reading material has gone digital?
Comment by Hart — October 1, 2010 @ 9:01 am
All the zombies plodding through the post-apocalyptic streets in search of reading material can come to MY house, where I suffocated before the cataclysm, buried under a mountain of books
The bookstores I frequent always seem to have their children’s rooms filled, and the moms I know seem to place a premium on instilling a love of reading–along with their kids’ games and devices–so I have hope that print can co-exist alongside digital for some time to come…
Of course, Jonathan Franzen’s UK publisher apparently printed 200,000 copies of his latest with an error significant enough that all 200k have to be pulped. Print does have its shortcomings.
Comment by jenny — October 1, 2010 @ 9:07 am
Hey Jenny-I have a blog award for you today!
Comment by Hart — October 2, 2010 @ 9:33 am
I remember when I said I didn’t need a microwave. And also when I said I didn’t need a cell phone. It’s possible I could do without those, but don’t take away my internet access!!
Comment by Kaye George — October 8, 2010 @ 9:28 am