I have a confession to make. I bought an e-reader. Okay, I fell even further than just an e-reader. I bought an iPad.
This happened two weeks ago, and I've already read three books on it start to finish.
I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not.
Is it great that I'm reading so much? Sure.
Is it great that I probably won't get arthritis in my shoulders to the same degree that I would have if I was still carrying around heavy novels in my purse for my commute? Sure.
But I'm reading too fast.
Yes, I realize this totally a problem a lot of people would love to have.
I feel like I'm missing things. I feel like my attention span is shortening. I'm not getting the total-immersion feel that I used to have when I was reading actual books.
Okay that's not entirely true. I do still get it. I'm still reading real books, most notably 1Q84, which just refuses to die. And it is a brick of a novel. It's about three inches thick from cover to cover. The words are densely packed. There are more than a thousand pages in the physical version, and I'm afraid to ask any of my e-reading friends how long the digital version is as my experience has always been that digital books are longer.
All the complaints aside though? It's glorious to flip pages with a simple tap of my finger. I'm flying through The Night Circus alongside the HuffPost Book Club. It's only taken me about three days of commutes to get halfway through it. I'm hoping I'll finish it this weekend.
I'm made uncomfortable by my shadowy thoughts of getting rid of my shelves and shelves of books and just carrying around an e-reader forever. Imagine how much easier it would be for me to move?
(I'm moving this weekend. By far, I have more boxes of books than anything else.)
Think of how much more nomadic I could be.
A little part of me loves that idea.
The other part of me stalks the Karl Lagerfeld website because I want to purchase that book-smelling perfume the minute that it's available. I don't know when that will be as it's still listed as "Coming Soon," but I'm saving my pennies so that I can.
Does it disturb anyone else that I'm really excited about a perfume that will, essentially, make me smell like mold? I mean, that's what we love about the smell of books right? The aging glue and paper and what moisture has done to them?
I know in my heart of hearts that I'll never be able to give up my real paper books, but I feel like Luke Skywalker taking that first step onto the Imperial shuttle. This is my first step towards the Dark Side of the Force.