I finish reading a book on my kindle — one by Ed McBain, for instance — and I shelve it in the cloud. It vanishes from my “device” and from my consciousness too. It’s very odd.
When I read a
physical book, I remember the text and the book — its shape,
jacket, heft and typography. When I read an e-book, I remember the
text alone. The bookness of the book simply disappears, or rather it
never really existed. Amazon reminds me that I’ve already bought
the e-book I’m about to order. In bookstores, I find myself
discovering, as if for the first time, books I’ve already read on
my kindle.
All of this makes me
think differently about the books in my physical library. They used
to be simply there, arranged on the shelves, a gathering of books I’d
already read. But now, when I look up from my e-reading, I realize
that the physical books are serving a new purpose — as constant
reminders of what I’ve read. They say, “We’re still here,” or
“Remember us?” These are the very things that e-books cannot say,
hidden under layers of software, tucked away in the cloud, utterly
absent when the kindle goes dark.
This may seem like a
trivial difference, but that’s not how it feels. Reading is
inherently ephemeral, but it feels less so when you’re making your
way through a physical book, which persists when you’ve finished
it. It is a monument to the activity of reading. It makes this
imaginary activity entirely substantial. But the quiddity of
e-reading is that it effaces itself.
In the past several
years, I’ve read nearly a lot books on my kindle. They’ve changed
me and changed my understanding of the world, distracted me and
entertained me. Yet I’m still pondering the nature of e-reading,
which somehow refuses to become completely familiar. But then,
readers are always thinking about the nature of reading, and have
done so since Gutenberg and long before.
There is a
disproportionate magic in the way black marks on white paper — or
their pixilated facsimiles — stir us into reverie and revise our
consciousness. Still, we require proof that it has happened. And that
proof is what the books on my shelves continue to offer.