I never considered buying a Kindle. Until, well, last week for about five minutes before I bought one.
It could be that I pre-ordered one of the new (cheapest) Kindles because since my house was burgled I’ve been suffering unreasonable urges to buy more stuff.
But I hope I ordered it because of the reason I’m telling people: That it’s uncomfortable for me, now that I’m older, sigh, to hold for long periods of time 500-plus page books. There are quite a few hefty books I’d like to read but won’t buy because I know after a couple evenings I’ll get cramps in my hands or get tired of shifting from side to side, up and down, at each new chapter.
Not to mention the fact, and oh, how I wish I didn’t have this fact to mention, it’s getting harder for me to read at night. The perfect reading lamp isn’t keeping up with my imperfect eyes.
I am a book person. A book-of-cloth-paper-ink-binding-endpapers-design-bookplate-name-scrawled-in-covers-notes-in-the-margin-booky-smell-loving person. I even grew the herb costmary because I read the leaves long ago were used as bookmarks, with a light lovely fragrance that possibly repelled silverfish and other page eaters. 
And I used the leaves as bookmarks.
I scoffed at e-readers, agreed with the danger of corporations digitizing books and readers giving up on paper books. I can sit on my library floor and feel incredibly rich because I have a room filled with books. A little room, with books worth little in dollars but immeasurable amounts of contentment and stimulation. A room that says “look around, this is who I am.”
How could I get that from a piece of black-ish plastic? What if I downloaded a book that was so good that I wanted to share it with someone? What about the books not in Kindle format? Would I self-censor because of it?
And how would this –this battery-run, non-book thing — add to the meaningfulness of my library? How could it enrich me?
Since all Kindles are back-ordered, I have time to wonder. I don’t know how much time. One day I’ll get an email saying my Kindle has been shipped, and it will be too late to stop it. I’ll keep it because I’m curious and a bit of a gadget girl. And because I’ll convince myself I will use it only to read those meaty books. But it’s a betrayal, isn’t it? Of whom or what, I need to decide.
How exactly is it a betrayal though? A betrayal of the physical enjoyment of book, the smell, the touch, the feel?
But books aren’t just physical objects for enjoyment, being surrounded by shelves of books would only give me allergies. Books are just physical embodiments of ideas and feelings and fantasies and knowledge. As long as it transposes you to a different world from one you embody, the book is there. It doesn’t matter if it’s a physical thing or if it’s been digitized.
You’re right about one thing though, I do miss the bookmarks. You had your costmary leaf bookmark, I used to collect blossoms (any flower), and they’d serve as really good fragrant bookmarks too. I do miss that.
I agree, books are physical embodiments of ideas…and that’s exactly why they are important to me. My library as a whole is a physical manifestation of who I am, and how I’ve become this person. Browse through my library, notice not only what the books are saying but at the physically beautiful ones, the ratty ones kept for a reason, look at the order I’ve shelved them. Discover the four- leaf clovers, the newspaper clippings, even the old shopping lists…Ask, “Why do you have this book? Where did you find it? What’s this about? Can I borrow it?”
I like being able to share my books now, and letting family members choose which they want when I die, and then sending the rest out into the world…this is important to me too.
But Kindle is a tool that will allow me to read some books more easily. Betrayal? Yes, in light of how I feel about my library. Not tragically so. But a little act multiplied thousands of time over can be a betrayal of libraries far greater than mine. “In Defense of the Memory Theater” by Nathan Schneider says it better than I can.
http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/in-defense-of-the-memory-theater/
Thanks so much for your comment!
More posts of this quatily. Not the usual c***, please