Posted by: Ham
« on: February 15, 2026 »
Books do furnish a room, don’t they? How much you associate with them is, I think a question of upbringing. Without question, more die of heartbreak than would if they were reading myself and others, vile bodies though they may be.
This is the point I stop trying to reply with book titles, Quixotic challenge though it may be (you probably didn’t notice – even if it were legible – that the bike with the Christmas tree which has amongst other duties transported me around Spain, has its name on the top bar in gloriously cursive script: Rocinante. Few names are ever that perfect.).
Anyways up, before discussing the difference between e-reader and dead tree, I think you need to establish your relationship with books, as that makes all the difference.
I confess, I used to be a book addict, “Voracious reader” doesn’t quite cut it. By 7 I was master of my library ticket, and the children’s library, often 4 books a day. Fairy stories, mythology, Enid Blyton, Regimal Crompton, WE Johns, Arthur Ransome, Anthony Buckeridge – if I didn’t have them at home I knew where to find them. By 9 I was reserving titles I wanted. As an aside, I’d heard of this author called Poe, couldn’t find them in the children’s library so reserved it. I later found out the librarian walked down the road to my dad (who had a local shoe shop) to ask if I could be given the book, and the bastard said “yes”. Those nightmares I had from it were formative in my views about ensuring age appropriate material.
Fast forward twenty years, and predictably my two bedroom flat had one bedroom as library, probably 120m+ of shelving. After all, nothing succeeds like excess. Move forward a few more years and those shelves moved with me into the home I made with Mrs Ham. And, stayed there on the shelves. Somehow, life had changed and crucially, the first Kindle had arrived (other eReaders exist but I sold my soul some time ago, so had nothing left to trade). Any fiction I wanted, I wanted on the kindle for convenience. I found myself turning to the other stuff – earnest literary works, poetry, car reference less and less often. Those double rows of books never got touched.
About ten years ago, I did the unthinkable – I cleared the shelves of most of my collection, retaining only a few categories that still runs to about 15-20m of shelving. Thus far I’ve had no cause to regret that, but boy was it a wrench. I’ve never been all that good at willpower, but this is an example of my superpower – wontpower. When motivated I can JFDI rather well, like when I gave up my smoking habit overnight (80/day) almost 40 years ago.
I am very happy reading almost any fiction on the Kindle. The first and most obvious difference is the tactile and visual of the physical volume. You can develop a relationship with a book that is impossible on a Kindle. Putting your hand on a favourite volume is an experience like the memories evoked by a scent. Some might have an inscription in, some might have been with you at special times. For example I have a couple of Ray Bradbury short story paperbacks (Long After Midnight and The October Country seeing as how you asked) that accompanied me (one or both) during my teen backpacking one-man-and-his-dog wild camping days, picking up those takes me straight back to a wet tent with a wet dog.
The moment you go down the Kindle path, you lose all that, swapped for the convenience of having an entire library with you at all time. Nostalgia for function – seems to me to be a fair swap.
You also have a unification of typeface. Great for quality of reading, but loses the author's intention - where that exists.
You also lose association with the author and title that you get from a book, the cover with title and author. The Kindle does show that when its off, but as I have a cover that switches on automatically when you open it, I rarely see that, certainly not in the way you do when you have a book lying around.
The next huge difference is in the ability for random access (meaning as in RAM, access any point in the volume directly and not sequentially). Flicking through pages looking for familiar shape or phrase is impossible, moving between places on an eReader is tedious and fraught. Some fiction has you wanting to flip pages back and forward, again impossible as conveniently on eReader, but it can be done.
When you combine that with the final substantial difference, pictures and illustrations are shite on an eReader they become useless for reference works, or anything that needs images.
Something lost, something gained, as ever.
