Books 1

I love books. I love reading. Nothing pleases me more on these cold winter nights, than getting under the covers, putting on my special old man reading glasses and propping a good book in front of my face. Or in summer (remember summer?) reading out in the yard under a shady tree. I am quite fussy about my reading and will search for weeks for the right book - just ask Julie. It is usually a tense few days around here when I find myself between books. So I try to avoid this situation and keep a book or two ahead if I can. I have even been known to read up to three books at a time - one for bed, one at work and one in the bathroom. Wouldn't it be great to keep several hundred books ahead?

And that brings me to the tricky topic of electronic books and e-readers. One can now love reading without loving books and without even owning a book. When I first heard of electronic readers I was very keen on them but I have not seen one yet that I like. I will admit I have only seen a few, the Sony Reader and the Kobo - both of which to me just don't seem to have the right feel. The Ipad seems to come closest to approximating the real reading experience - you can actually turn the pages and I am sure Apple could plug in the sound of pages turning if they wanted to.

Believe it or not, I first read an "ebook" on my computer over 12 years ago. It was written by Mike Nesmith (that's right - one of the Monkees). He published the first five chapters of his novel "The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora" on his website. To finish the story you had to buy the actual book so I ordered one and had it shipped - even paid extra to have it autographed. Pretty clever marketing for a Monkee. However, the first widely available electronic book for download was "Riding the Bullet" by Stephen King way back in 2000. In one day it sold 400,000 copies at $2.50 per download before the servers crashed. But it did manage to pave the way for the massive book publishing revolution we are seeing today.

I enjoyed reading both of these early examples of electronic books because they were well written and worth reading. What I didn't enjoy was reading them on a computer screen - hard on the eyes, hard on the back and not a very pleasant experience other than for the sheer novelty of it. I am curious and excited about eReaders but at this point I still prefer real books - and I know a time will come when that pleasure may become a thing of the past. Fortunately this won't happen in my lifetime. I don't think there is any need to start hoarding books at this point in time but the future definitely belongs to the electronic reader.

I guess my point is that these two formats can and will co-exist for the time being. Books are here to stay but I fear they may ultimately come at a premium. I don't own an eReader yet but I am sure I will in the near future - we all will. I can even picture myself climbing into bed on a cold night and firing up a chapter or two of Charles Dickens. Maybe I'll even have the book read itself to me.

Now if they can only figure out a way to duplicate that book smell...