I was raised by a book-loving dad who passed on to me both the love of reading and the love of books. He also passed on a love of maps, but that’s another story. One of his lifelong goals was to publish books, and by a round-about path he ultimately accomplished that goal. As an old TV commercial has it, “And I got to help!”
So, a love and respect for books has long been with me. I began collecting them early enough that a memorable part of each move over the decades has involved lots of boxes of books. And having to install bookshelves all over again, because I like the kind with bracket rails screwed to the wall studs and planks on brackets arranged to suit a customized layout.
When I move, I leave those behind so I can try something fresh in the new place. Great for the new owners and my desire for change, but lots of time, cost, and physical effort on top of the hauling of all those boxes of books.
My reverence towards books was such that it took me a long time to accept that I could write in ones I own. I still usually don’t, but I can. Typically, if I want to annotate something, I stick a Post-it note on the page. Rather than highlight, I stick a mini tape flag on the spot. I don’t dogear, I use bookmarks.
There’s a friendly joke among the friends I loan books to about how I can read a paperback without cracking the spine. I can tell which paperbacks I’ve loaned out, because those have cracked spines. It’s not like I hold the book weird. I don’t barely open it and peer down into the crack. As far as I can tell, I read paperbacks in a perfectly normal way. Yet the spines remain pristine. Light touch, I guess.
Page 151
There is a funny exception to the family ethic of not marring books. On books he owned and valued, dad wrote his name, or used a rubber stamp he had, on the bottom margin of page 151. His logic was that, if anyone stole the book and looked to remove the owner’s name from the logical front or back pages, they were unlikely to check page 151. But dad could easily identify his own property. Even a ripped off margin on that page would be a giveaway. A clever — albeit never needed — idea. Better safe, I guess.
If the book was too short for 151 pages, he used page 51. I followed his lead on this for many years, but over time did it less and less until the practice slipped quietly into history. I have a hand-held squeezy thing, a birthday gift from dad, that embosses a customized three-inch medallion on a piece of paper — “From the Library of …” Fancy, but kind of a pain to go through all your books. And it’s not like thieves are pilfering them. There’s no need to mark my territory.
The point of all the backstory is to make clear I have a lifelong reverence, not just for reading, but for the books themselves. Libraries and bookstores have been among my favorite places. I was constitutionally unable to leave either without a stack of books under my arm.
But Then I Got an iPhone
Ever since I got my iPhone, only five years ago (I’m a late adapter), I’ve been migrating towards electronic books — ebooks. I have to admit they’ve won me over completely. They have many striking advantages over physical books. Physical books do retain the advantage of not needing electrical power to work. And of lasting much longer. Digital media is notoriously ephemeral. (Remember floppy disks?) Also, ownership of a physical book is hard to dispute, and they can be easily loaned to friends.
So, books aren’t anywhere near over, have no fear. There is mass-produced beer, but there is also craft beer, and even special-edition beer and homemade beer. There will always be a niche for the artistic craft of making books.
The Joy of eBooks
I have, however, discovered significant advantages in ebooks. Firstly, I casually carry around in my pocket, a library of over 200 books (most in my Apple library but growing numbers in my Kindle library). And some 60 gigs of music. Not to mention a library of photos. All in my pocket. I was born in the middle of the previous century. This is amazing to me. And that doesn’t count the almost 600 library ebooks I’ve downloaded and read since August of 2020. (How I know that is another ebook advantage — see below.)
Lookup and Translate: When comfortably in chair or couch reading, if I stumble across a word I don’t know, I just highlight it and look it up. If the built-in dictionary doesn’t know it, another press searches the interweb for it. This is also helpful with authors who use foreign phrases. Agatha Christie, for example, knew her readers were conversant with some basic French phrases, but I am not. Just highlight and translate, please and thank you!
Highlighting: Speaking of highlighting, all the ebook readers I’ve used do highlighting, typically in a nice selection of colors (the traditional yellow, of course, but blue, pink, green, and so on). Most allow typed in annotations, too. There’s usually a section listing all your highlighted bits and annotations. Kindle even allows exporting it, which is pretty sweet when writing a book review — no more carefully typing in bits.
Searching the text: When that character you briefly met ten chapters ago pops up and you can’t remember who they are, highlight and search the book for occurrences of their name. That usually comes with surrounding sentences, so you often get enough to jog your memory just from the search. If not, jump to a useful-looking bit and re-read it.
Navigation: Speaking of jumping around, typically, if you jump back (or forward, say to an index), there’s an easy way to return to your spot. Some readers keep a “trail” of places to help you find your way back if you go jumping around. You can always create bookmarks — the bookmarks section lists them and lets you jump to them.
Fonts and Appearance: You can change the font to match your preference. You can change the line-spacing depending on whether you like your text loose or tight. You can change the background color if you prefer sepia or whatever.
Dark Mode and Glare: You can read in the dark, either turning the screen brightness way down or by using dark mode. I’ve long had issues with the glare from graphic novels and magazines, but that isn’t a problem with electronic media. The screen is its own light source, which can overpower diffuse glare, and the flat screen is easier to angle away from specular glare than curved pages. With shiny paper, seems as if there’s always some highlight bouncing into my eyes.
Auto Audio: Some readers can read the text aloud.
Handheld: And all this fits into one hand. Change pages with a thumb swipe.
Interweb Free Libraries: There are lots of interweb sites offering free downloads. Gutenberg offers a wealth of texts in the public domain, and other sites act as libraries. Not to mention actual libraries, which also offer ebooks and emagazines. And when purchased, ebooks are typically cheaper than their physical counterparts.
I’m Sold!
Those are a lot of advantages, and I have to confess they have won me over. I realized how much so when I recently downloaded a copy of Ender’s Game from the library rather than read the paperback sitting on my shelf. And I had to wait 23 days for it to become available. It appears I’m pretty far gone.
In fact, the last few years I’ve been steadily donating books (and DVDs) to the local library. Physical media is just so last century. (I’m kidding. Mostly.) But there are still books I can’t bear to part with. Too much history, too loved.
I totally get the love of physical books, always have. There is no disdain here. It’s just that, damn, ebooks are pretty amazing when it comes to reading. They may lack a certain je ne sais quoi, but I find the advantages compelling.
Fun with Libby JSON
This next bit is geeky, so if you’re allergic, bail now!
To access the online books and magazines in my local library system, I use the Libby app by OverDrive. One feature it has is a timeline of my activity (putting a book on hold, checking one out, returning it). That’s nice, but what I especially like is that it can be exported in several formats.
Here’s where it gets deeply geeky. One export format is a JSON file. I’m a retired software designer, so it’s easy for me to use Python to code up something that turns that JSON data into something useful.
So, I know I’ve borrowed 578 library ebooks since August 2020. I also know that comprises 107 different authors. The winner was Agatha Christie — 63 books (I went on a binge reading all her work). Runner-up was Lawrence Block — 47 books (likewise, due to a binge exploring his other character work besides my long-time favorite, Bernie the Burglar).
Most of it for me is the fun of writing the code to make the reports I want, but it’s fun to see the numbers, too. It makes me smile fondly at those drives trying to get people to — please, please, please — read a few books a month. Or at least one.
According to the data, I read a book every 2.5 days or so! 😁
I also love maps. And globes. And my Kindle!
Except lately when I've been spending too much time on Substack!