This is the world we live in today, to save trees from having to be used in making paper, we have resorted to reading books on our technological devices.
It has it's perks, believe me. When Roger and I received our kindles years ago, the virtues of electronic reading devices were explained to us, and we like them so much that at Christmas this year I even bought Roger and upgraded version of the Kindle. I wrote about it here.
However, holding a book and reading it the other evening made me miss books; page turning, laying them down in an open position to come back too. The smell, the touch. Made me want to run right out and buy actual copies of many of the books I have on my shelves.
I have to admit that if I am in a used bookstore and find a book that I have on the Kindle that I especially liked, I buy it.
I've read enough doomsday material to know that when and if the end comes in my lifetime, an EMP will take out all of our technology and we will be thrust back into "the dark ages" (hardly), or as some consider them, where we will have to go back to living lives without cell phones, computers, and any and most technology. Yes, like when we were growing up if you're over a certain age.
How in the world will we read books? That's right, the old-fashioned way.
I like my kindle app on my IPad, and I love having at my fingertips, thousands of books that I can carry with me anywhere I can take my IPad. I love being able to read at night when the only light in the room is the faint glow of my IPad. I think the Kindle and Nook, and other such devices are a blessing. But I do miss being able to share my books with folks who might not have Kindle, or Nook or whatever. In the past few months, I have read several books that I would have loved to share with others, by handing them my copy, but alas, I have no actual copy to share.
The dilemma in that is sometimes my books don't get returned, even though there is a sticker or return address label in the front reminding the borrower just who's book it is. But when I loan a book, I know that it is a possibility that it might not get returned. Thus, it is nice to have the backup copy on my Kindle.
For when you can take a book and place it in someone's hand, the possibility of them actually reading it increases over them just being told to look it up and read it....I'd say it seldom is followed through on.
I'll keep buying books on both my Kindle and actual books.
I love rooms with bookshelves lined with books; libraries I believe they used to be called. There is something comforting in having row upon row of books at my disposal, and I do.
I have how-to books, something that is rare these days with the invention of Google and Wikipedia. You can search the internet and get an answer to any question, you can even go to YouTube and see how it is done....but I still like my books.
Fortunately, we don't have to make a definitive choice yet, and I'm hoping I'm long gone when that day comes because I wouldn't want to. So in the meantime, I'll have the best of both worlds.
