About Kindle

Amazon.com really thinks I need a Kindle. You know what that is: the Web store's portable, wireless reading device that instantly downloads -- for a price -- virtually any book you'd like from among thousands of titles. Feel the impulse to dive into Ahab's cetacean obsession? Just send along the electronic equivalent of money and voila, the electronic equivalent of Melville's classic appears.

It is irksome that every time I shop at Amazon, ads for the Kindle appear front and center. The Web store claims to be able to intuit what I would want to read, so why can't it figure out that I don't want a Kindle and actually resent the thing? I am not "platform-agnostic." I worry about book publishing in a post-Kindle world. Will paper survive?

I can't quantify this, but a percentage of my book-reading pleasure -- and not an insubstantial one -- is derived from the physicality of reading. I love holding a book in my hand and the stolid way it occupies a space. I love the sense of accomplishment as the pages on the unread side diminish. And it's not just a matter of how many pages are left, but of inches read versus inches to go, as the weight of the book shifts.

A book of significant length is a statement of gravitas through bulk. The earth-bound book communicates something about itself and its reader by being so imposing. Reading it is a project, a commitment.

In contrast, e-books are by their nature captured sunbeams -- ephemera -- offering no trophy for reading.

I write this while surrounded by books on overpacked shelves. I peruse them with pride, reading bindings and allowing my mind to momentarily remember the upshot: Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace -- a clever take on the odd and banal; The Power Broker by Robert Caro -- Robert Moses was an arrogant genius; My Antonia by Willa Cather -- life was simpler then.

Not that I've read everything.

The Spanish philosopher Jose Gaos once wrote: "Every private library is a reading plan."

This is true of mine. Every fifth book that my eyes wander over is not yet read. It is waiting for me to pick it up. Some would think this a terrible waste, but I take comfort in having books at the ready. I get to many eventually, but I have to see its binding and be enticed by the cover to want to pluck it from exile. I'm guessing that e-books don't call out in the same way.

In 2006, William Powers, media critic at the National Journal and a fellow at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard, wrote a white paper titled: Hamlet's Blackberry: Why Paper is Eternal. It was very hopeful to us paper-philes.

"There are cognitive, cultural and social dimensions to the human-paper dynamic that come into play every time any kind of paper, from a tiny Post-it note to a groaning Sunday newspaper, is used to convey, retrieve or store information," Powers writes. "Paper does these jobs in a way that pleases us, which is why, for centuries, we have liked having it around. It's also why we will never give it up as a medium."

Powers quotes studies finding that paper has inherent characteristics that facilitate the "full-immersion, deep-dive" kind of "shut out the world" reading focus.

He says that paper's immutability means that: "The book you place on your nightstand as you drift off to sleep will be exactly the same book when you wake up in the morning." This comforts us.

Also, Powers notes that the physical limitations of paper necessitate that it be selective -- as opposed to the limitlessness of cyberspace -- and this "imposes order on the vastness of the information universe."

He says that for e-paper to replace paper, it will have to become paper.

You can find Powers' writing online here.

But to give it your full attention, I'd recommend printing it out.

© 2008 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times

Comments

[BufoCalvin]

The specific example of Melville is an interesting one, since Moby Dick is one of more than 100,000 books that are available for free. Not through Amazon, but easily put on your Kindle. The vast majority of books I read on my Kindle come from free sources like Project Gutenberg.

The comparison between paper books and ebooks is similar to the comparison between seeing a live concert and listening to recorded music. While most people find the experience of listening to live musicians perform exhilarating, they are willing to trade that sensual element for the convenience of listening to a wide variety of works in the car or while exercising or while reading a book.

I love books, and like Ms. Blumner, feel buoyed in the presence of the thousands on my shelves. However, just as I am glad to have had the opportunity to hear recorded music and artists that I could never have experienced live, I am very happy to have the ability to read books which would have been very difficult to find and sometimes expensive to purchase.

[Stephen]

The intersection here is reading. I have over 3000 books- all read. And I have a new Kindle-with prospects. I have a library card. I have a Motorola Q with Mysteries and the Classics from Mobipocket. I can hit the Gutenberg Project, or Amazon, or the Library of Congress via the Internet. It isn't either/or, it is AND. I am a reader and I enjoy reading in all its forms. I am also a traveler. The books stay home. I had lunch with Mark Twain via Kindle today. I had Taco Bell and E. Annie Proulx via the New Yorker magazine yesterday. I usually shower but sometimes I like a long hot leisurely bath. Similarly, I am a constant reader, daily-mundane, with the luxury of a new book, a bunch of grapes and an easy chair as bliss. It 's all good. Except for television. It sucks but some people like it. I can live with that.

[krm1255]

I just don't see the point of this article.

If you want to buy a Kindle, buy one. If not, don't. Nobody's saying you have to do one or the other, since both it and books are available.

I happen to like mine. If you don't, that's fine with me, I'm not taking your books away.

[jayrayspicer]

I recently traveled around the globe. I ran out of reading material about halfway, just because I wanted to travel light. I really wished I had a Kindle with 10 or 12 unread books lined up on it. Actually, for traveling, what I really want is a phone/camera/ebook device. Maybe iPhone 3.0? 4.0?

I also want something less massive than a hardbound book when reading in bed. Even some paperbacks are simply too large to hold comfortably when reading in bed. It's not the weight so much as the awkward balance and tricky lighting. The Kindle would seem to do away with these problems.

Having said that, I really do like the look of a hardbound book, but at this point, I think I'd be willing to give that up (with a few exceptions) for the right technology. Kindle is a little too bulky, and I'd prefer a one-device solution, but I still may buy a Kindle.

[JBS]

You can get a lot of mileage out of a couple of paperbacks stuffed in the bottom of your ruck. And when you've read 'em, you can swap with your buddies ... or pass them along to the chaplain to share out.

Can't do THAT with a kindle.

[racom]

You can also build a campfire with the paperbacks but not with the kindle. Of course with the kindle you would still have something to read and that is the point. Carry your paperbacks, carry a dozen, I'll take the kindle with 500 books on board and still be packing lighter than you!

[MWest]

Hogwash & Drivel. At some point in time some (frightened & static) person decried the move from scrolls to bound books, "there's just something about the feel of rolling yard after yard from one side to the other..." The author takes "comfort" in books "at the ready"? At any given moment my Kindle has dozens ( and one day will have hundreds) of books "at the ready". & thousands more are "at the ready" via the whispernet. It sits in your hand like a book - nothing ephemeral about 11 oz. of leather clad electronics. The true pleasure in a book lies in its contents. The world is over run with crappy paper back books with no visual or tactile value. Perhaps, those of you so romantically involved with cumbersome personal libraries full of paper books which warm your soul & impress your friends, should consider this; e-books have the potential to reinvigorate the craft of quality book binding. Instead of collecting poorly made cardboard covered hardbacks, or worse, glued up paperbacks, the e-book could free you to spend more money on (& provide publishers more incentive to produce) well crafted, leather bound copies of your favorite books. These would be works of art inside & out, something truly pleasant to hold & behold.

[truth101]

Your blurb entirely misses the subtle acuteness of Robyn's point
which is that there is a good deal of a persons identity wrapped
up in the ACTUAL CONCRETE ACTIVITY OF READING....that
the actual physical attachment to the media is a form of
the LEBENWELT which is lost in the transmutation to the flat
world.
Take the commonplace activity of reading in bed....many
people takes their books with them to the very very closing
moments of their day......getting from them their last inputs
from another soul......its may be a thriller or cosmology or
macroeconomics or even a dumb romance.....who cares...
the point is in this situation the FEEL of the book counts....
you can if for exampe you need to mark it up..... ding it....
put it face down to keep a place....etc..etc. this is just
one small albeit important example of what she is getting at....
something is missing with kindie......this may be too subtle
for you but its so widespread for people of all age groups
....from toddlers to ancient people....you have to recognze
that our species....sapiens....LOVE THEIR BOOKS....

[MWest]

Sorry 101, I think you've missed the "acuteness" of my "subtle point" which is that at any point in time people become attached to that which is commonly available & familiar. When you read in bed (as I often do) you may take from that experience your "last imputs from another soul" (aaauugh) but those imputs come from their words, not the collection of wood pulp in your hand. You may be comforted by the feel of that object, but it is b/c you have not gotten familiar with the feel of another object. In much the same way my imagenary scroll devotee likely lamented the passing of vellum wrapped wood, you want to cling to the familiar. Clearly, you've adapted to typing - where is the longing for the feel of pen on paper, the soul warming scratch of nib against fiber? Why do you not cling to the inherent beauty and individual flurish of a well crafted longhand? I'll tell you why. B/c for most pratical applications typing, particularly on a computer offers so much more - greater access to more information, more people, new ideas, consistant readability, etc., etc.

By the way, there is nothing particularly "subtle" or intellectually advanced about wanting to cling to the present. As Emerson famously said, "a foolish consistancy is the hobgoblin of little minds"...Perhaps, you don't recognize "that our species....sapiens...." IS SUCCESSFUL B/C IT ADAPTS....

[KillTheMessenger]

A couple of books (out of maybe a hundred in my personal library alone) that Amazon will never put on the Kindle simply because it can't display them:

Misner, Thorne, Wheeler "Gravitation"

Edward R. Tufte "The Visual Display of quantitative Information"

Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat, Cecile Dewitt-Morette "Analysis, Manifolds and physics"

Werner Spies and Sabine Rewald, eds. "Max Ernst: A Retrospective"

If you haven't seen books like these, you have not seen books. Period.

[MWest]

Excellent point. A situation which may change with further development of epaper technology. If not, see above comment about "well crafted, leather bound copies" etc., etc.

[racom]

"A couple of books (out of maybe a hundred in my personal library alone) that Amazon will never put on the Kindle simply because it can't display them:" That would be 2 and leave 98 which I can carry with me everywhere I go.
"Edward R. Tufte "The Visual Display of quantitative Information"

Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat, Cecile Dewitt-Morette "Analysis, Manifolds and physics"

Werner Spies and Sabine Rewald, eds. "Max Ernst: A Retrospective"
How many of the other 150,000 that I can get on the kindle at amazon have you read?

[truth101]

I agree with much of this that you write, but feel its essential to
keep perspective and really appreciate the EXTREAORDINARY
advantages in our new digital age. There are now tens of thousands
of books published in the last 5 centuries which have never ever
been reprinted and are genuinely RARE that you would otherwise never ever
see but with great great difficulty and then only for a limited number of hours
during the workweek of a depository library. The availabiity is staggering
and of course as is pointed out will never ever have the same
sense as the real paper and the real ink, etc. Amazon is not OPEN SOUCE
and i don't know if you can use Kindle to access the plentitue of material
at archive.com or the other numerous FREE OPEN ONLINE BOOK
NETWORKS. AMAZON should make this capacity available as it
would reinforce their product.

[KillTheMessenger]

Amazon is simply trying to make money. They are not in the business of giving the public access to the knowledge of the world. That's still the job of the public library.

We need to be very careful not to be deceived by flashy technological toys into believing that the private sector can replace the functions that historically were filled out by public institutions. Many technology apostles (including Google and M$) are trying hard to convince people that they can supply services which are vital but economically not viable (Google search and Google books are still not doing the same thing your librarian can - if you ask nicely). No sane economist will support that notion and I doubt any of the more relevant stockholders of these companies will, either.

[AntonBursch]

I bought my wife a Kindle for her birthday last month... she says it's the best thing she's ever owned next to her camera.

We both buy books and we both enjoy the feeling of connection with a real book and the great feeling of that growing library in our home.

But we both sometimes just want to read a trashy paperback for a couple days and the Kindle is great for that.

Plus, NOTHING beats a Kindle when it comes to running errands with each other. One of us is usually always bored at times and the kindle is great.

Plus, you get to browse the internet for free as much as you want. That's just awesome.

We don't read books less with the Kindle, we read more books with the Kindle.

[KillTheMessenger]

"Plus, you get to browse the internet for free as much as you want."

You mean, you get to browse the internet for $359.

If you go to the library, you actually get to browse the internet for free. Really.

Amazon, by the way, seems to be losing money on every e-book they sell. If the business model does not take off soon (by publishers agreeing to lower their prices a lot for e-books), Amazon will have no choice but to shut it down. And then you will have spent a lot of money for... nothing.

Enjoy.

[krm1255]

Wow you spend a lot of time being angry over the Kindle.

To extend your analogy, libraries aren't free either since our taxes pay for them. There is nothing in this world that is truly free.

[cylindar]

Ebooks are a powerful revolution similar to the Gutenberg press. Books although nice as you say will go the way of the horse for mass transportation. It is sad in a way but also good because ebooks can offer so much more for people. Of course if you have a paper addiction and want to cut down a tree to satisfy that addiction you can always buy one at a higher rice. I have to say as a college student I appreciate digital media because now I do not have to carry tons of text to each class and have most of my material (many ebooks) in one compact notebook. Great!!! I think what your talking about is relevant to the pleasure book industry but there are many other applications for books that don't quite fit your frame of experience or reference.

[KillTheMessenger]

I will have used about a hundred times as many trees for toilet paper in my life as I will have used for the books which I own. And I own a lot of books. In the US the average reader gets sent more paper in form of spam mail than he buys in books, by far. Not to mention that many people need paper printouts for their job. In my case, despite doing my design work on a computer, that alone amounts to using more paper than I buy in form of books.

From an ecological perspective a Kindle does close to nothing.

It looks good. It might even be functional. But don't make it appear like a device that can solve our serious cellulose addiction. It simply can not.

[MWest]

Are you sure about all that, or are you just trying to sound as though you've thought this through? I've bought about 8 - 10 books, and recieved the current editions of the Nation on my Kindle this month. Conservatively that's 2800 - 3500 sheets of paper - larger, thicker paper than TP & at 500 shts/roll that's, 5 to 7 rolls of TP/mos. Probably get 2-5 pieces of junk mail daily..

Okay, I concede your point, Kindle won't save the environment. It helps a little. But what's your point? Are you offended by the Kindle? Your original comment (as I said above) was valid. The rest of this..really, what's the point. Sure, you have to buy the Kindle to "browse the internet for free" (not the best use of a Kindle) but, you also have to buy every other internet browsing device out there - & pay for internet access. & the library thing...whaa? I don't know how many internet stations your library has, but if we all go to ours here, theres gonna be a hell of a line - so I don't think that's much of a point.

So, you don't want a Kindle. We get it. Thanks for playing.

[racom]

Your life is out of balance. Spend more time in the library and less time in the crapper!

[pizzmoe]

Robyn, If I may, I'm going to give you a piece of unsolicited advice.
Don't buy a Kindle.

[marijam]

I love books too, but I don't like having to pack them up to move and I don't like the prices, or paying for shipping. Yeah, yeah, I know. Go to the library. It's miles away. With my Kindle, I can read more of the books I want and I find that I read faster with the Kindle, especially since I get to set the font size. I can lose myself in a Kindle book just as with a regular paper book and I don't have to worry about where to put them, I have four book cases already and I don't want to stack them up all over the house, or put up book shelves all along every wall in every room.

[rjmiller]

While I don't own a Kindle, I love the idea. And while I also love the smell of a new book, the total lack of portability of books is a real problem for me. The traditional solution, the paperback, has its own problems. Paperbacks come out about a year or two after the initial publishing and they are moving towards the large trade paperbacks to increase revenue for publishers while completely defeating the purpose of the paperback: making the book smaller and cheaper. Also, when traveling I am usually have to carry 4-5 books with me due to how much I read with all the spare time in transit in additional to hotel downtime. The Kindle solves all of these problems, and does even more by allowing you to bring a veritable library worth of material to choose from at will.

Of course, there are also advantages the Kindle provides to publishers. Keeping older books or books with less immediate appeal in print can be an expensive risk at a time when books have dwindling demand. Books that don't quickly sell at bookstores are returned to publishers for refunds. Many paperback editions are not even considered worth the cost of shipping back to the publisher, so the cover is torn off and returned instead for refund with the text thrown out. Its a wasteful system that discourages publishers from putting out as much material as they can in a digital format.

[racom]

I find that after you have waited for the approximate year for the paper back it still costs $7 to $9. Why wait for the year when you can read it fresh for $9.99 on the kindle. I read a lot of emotional comments here in resistance to the ebooks. I like books and I like the kindle, mostly I like to read and the kindle makes it easier. For any with eye problems, the large font size makes reading much better, less eye fatigue.

[molsongrrrl]

I love books ... I love buying a new hardcover book ... I like the feel of them ... I like owning them. Moving day is never fun with all my books.

That being said, I love my Kindle too! I take the train to work and I find traveling with it is much easier than carrying a couple of books. I've also taken stories friends have written and got them encoded for the Kindle (you don't have to pay for it ... you have an option ... pay .10 to email it to Amazon and get it sent wirelessly to the Kindle or pay nothing and get it back from Amazon and manually put it onto the Kindle).

I don't believe ebooks will ever take the place of paper ... but I enjoy both.

[Sumocat]

"...I don't want a Kindle and actually resent the thing? I am not 'platform-agnostic.'" -- Interesting choice of words. The late Marc Orchant was easily the most vocal proponent of the Kindle I've known and his blog was named "Platform Agnostic". I had not realized until reading your exact opposite position that his agnosticism may have had a direct connection to his love for the Kindle.