Print is Not Dead

I go through phases with my Kindle.  Sometimes it's all I want to have: clicking from page to page, having free range to dip and dive into several different books, and having so many tomes at my fingertips can be exhilarating.   More often than not, though, I just want to hold a book.

I want to hold a book.  I want to smell it.  I want to be able to turn its pages, write in it, flip through it and hear the pages rustling. 

I do fear, though, that many are not of my opinion.  I fear that many growing up today would rather have an eReader than a book.  But then the internet gives me something like this:

Readers on the NY Subway

Reiner Gerritsen spent over three years collecting these images of readers reading on the NYC Subway.  This was beautiful, marvelous, everything I needed.  I would have loved to be the artist clicking photos of others reading.  I love looking at these photos, and studying the intensity on the readers' faces: the joy, wonder, bewilderment.  I love trying to imagine why they need that book at that very moment.  I'm not trying to be weird or nosy, but I will think about the book I see you holding...just a warning...and this will be the look I get when someone catches me wondering:

WHAT CHU LOOKIN AT, WILLIS???

An eReader might give you and your book choices some privacy, but I also love to shout out to the world what I'm reading.  I like it when a stranger will strike up a conversation with me about the book I'm reading.  That's always lovely, because one of the things I enjoy most is talking about what I'm reading.  (Just ask the students here at Uni: I GUSH about books...I think I overwhelm the students sometimes.  I know cause they look at me funny when I stop for a breath.)

My Kindle is fun, no doubt.  It's good for travel, since I can take a lot of books with me without being weighed down, but it will never win.  Stephen Fry agrees with me, too: