Things I Love: #1 - Kindle
My Kindle! Yeah, I didn't see this one coming either. I'm a librarian, I've always been very much of a mind with Giles on this one:
GILES: Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower, or a-a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell musty and-and-and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is a - it, uh, it has no-no texture, no-no context. It's-it's there and then it's gone. If it's to last, then-then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible, it should be, um, smelly.
I always said I loved the physicality of books as much as the words within. I'm a picky kind of person - I like paperbacks, not hardbacks; I like thick chunky books; I like small print. The format of the book is almost as important to me as the story or the plot or the words. And for all those reasons, I've always been very resistant to ebooks and ebook readers. Reading on a computer or an iPad or whatever has never felt like 'proper' reading to me, like somehow I'm not taking it in in the same way.
And yet. My brother bought me a Kindle for my birthday (today! happy birthday to me!) and I just finished reading my first book on there. And I love it. I can't explain why. I didn't expect to; I almost feel guilty in doing so; I'm thinking about the endless boxes of books I need to unpack in my house and almost feeling like I've suddenly made them redundant. After only a day or two an actual book almost feels strange in my hands.