I read today that E-books outsold soft bound books for the first time ever. I’m a bit sad about this, but not particularly surprised. I wonder where the line between “progress” and physical books sit. Most book people would agree that a good book is a thing of beauty. Many book people would also note that carrying ten books on an airplane is a real pain in the foot. I suspect that this jump is coming as E-book readers are getting cheaper, and the ipad seems to be exploding at every junction. This raises questions to me about archivability. Real books certainly will take up a bookshelf for as long as it is able, but the portability of an E-book is amazing. So far, I have downloaded a few e-books on my wife’s iPad, but, for the most part, my reading still takes place using physical books. I attended a fascinating lecture by Katherine Hayles yesterday. She raised issues of close reading, and hyper reading. While no teacher ever asks a student not to read very closely. I would not be able to finish my studies without hyper reading. I read fast by necessity. One of the interesting points she made was that students who read online works do not seem to to know how much time is appropriate to spend with the online texts; its as if reading online causes students to assume hyper reading as the norm. On the opposite end, when reading a physical book students seem inclined to spend time with it. The issue seems to be that teachers need to learn how to teach students to read online texts and not dismiss them completely. All of these things complicate my feeling that E-books are going to change books as we know them. But, perhaps one day, when/If I jump on the E-book bandwagon I will be able to read my books in a more portable fashion and have nice copies at home. Oh, what a time we live in.
Paper-Backs beat my E-Books
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