July 24, 2008--Reading In the Rain
Though it is only 6:00 a.m. and the rain is subsiding, my bones tell me that we're in for an all-day soaker.
So I’ve already stacked kindling and a few logs in the fireplace, fluffed the pillows on the sofa, and set aside Joseph O’Neill’s recent novel, Netherland. It’s been extravagantly promoted and reviewed, (compared already, can you believe it, to The Great Gatsby); and though that sort of attention tends to lures me to buy it, it also makes me suspect that the author is being hyped as the latest sensation and I am thus prepared both to find it rapturous or to give in to schadenfreudian glee at its shortcomings.
In other words, no mater what happens with the weather or Netherland, I’m prepared to have a wonderful day.
Just think how much less I’d have to look forward to if I had bought myself that new Kindle gizmo that Amazon has just put out. I don’t have all the details but it’s supposed to be something like an oxymoronic “wireless book.” Since I buy some of my books from Amazon they sent me an electronic ad for it, which in part said that Kindle’s:
• Revolutionary electronic-paper display provides a sharp, high-resolution screen that looks and reads like real paper.
• Simple to use: no computer, no cables, no syncing.
• Wireless connectivity enables you to shop the Kindle Store directly from your Kindle—whether you’re in the back of a taxi, at the airport, or in bed.
• Buy a book and it is auto-delivered wirelessly in less than one minute.
• More than 140,000 books available, including more than 98 of 112 current New York Times® Best Sellers.
I can’t restrain myself from doing a little deconstructing—
“Electronic-paper display . . . that looks and reads like real paper”? Putting aside how this saves trees, it takes a lot of marketing chutzpah to compare whatever even a high-definition screen can produce to real paper. And besides, when it comes to book pages, it’s not as much about looks as it is about feel; and I suspect that even Amazon is years away from developing the capacity of what they call “electronic-paper” to simulate that tactile reality.
“No syncing”? I admit I’m old and conservative about these kinds of matters and basically illiterate--if that’s the correct word--when talking about anything having to do with electronics or computers. I’m clueless when it comes to know what to do with my cell phone other than making and receiving calls, or what I would do with a Blackberry if I had one, or what else to do with my Apple laptop other than use it for writing and accessing the Internet; so to tell me I would not have to do any “syncing” if I were so foolish as to spend $359 for a Kindle, is not really very comforting or likely to cause me to rush to the landline or cell phone. Sorry, I of course should have said, to buy one on-line.
Nor do I want to order a “book” while in “the back of a taxi.” If you think the idea of doing that is attractive, I suspect you haven’t recently been careened around in one in New York City.
Nor am I enticed by having access, that’s the word, right, to “98 of 112 current New York Times Best Sellers.” I’m such a book snob that I wouldn’t be caught buying any of the 98 much less the full 112. On the other hand, if one of them could be discretely delivered to me in only one minute in the privacy of a taxi . . . who knows what I’d do.
But give me a real, tactile, creaky book to curl up with by the fire. One where I can hear the pages as I turn them. (I suspect that a Kindle beeps.) Give me something to read that has heft so that when I soon stretch out on the couch and rest it on my chest I can feel it literally attaching itself to me. Give me something that when I open it I am enveloped by the sweet, woodsy smell of real paper.
And, most important, when I as quickly as possible drift toward sleep and let what I’m reading slip to my chest I want to know that the warmth it generates to secure my dreams is from an organic thing—a book—and not from an electronic thing--a Kindle screen--which, for all I know, might be emitting something while I surreptitiously devour Danielle Steel’s Best Seller that will surely give me cancer.
So I’ve already stacked kindling and a few logs in the fireplace, fluffed the pillows on the sofa, and set aside Joseph O’Neill’s recent novel, Netherland. It’s been extravagantly promoted and reviewed, (compared already, can you believe it, to The Great Gatsby); and though that sort of attention tends to lures me to buy it, it also makes me suspect that the author is being hyped as the latest sensation and I am thus prepared both to find it rapturous or to give in to schadenfreudian glee at its shortcomings.
In other words, no mater what happens with the weather or Netherland, I’m prepared to have a wonderful day.
Just think how much less I’d have to look forward to if I had bought myself that new Kindle gizmo that Amazon has just put out. I don’t have all the details but it’s supposed to be something like an oxymoronic “wireless book.” Since I buy some of my books from Amazon they sent me an electronic ad for it, which in part said that Kindle’s:
• Revolutionary electronic-paper display provides a sharp, high-resolution screen that looks and reads like real paper.
• Simple to use: no computer, no cables, no syncing.
• Wireless connectivity enables you to shop the Kindle Store directly from your Kindle—whether you’re in the back of a taxi, at the airport, or in bed.
• Buy a book and it is auto-delivered wirelessly in less than one minute.
• More than 140,000 books available, including more than 98 of 112 current New York Times® Best Sellers.
I can’t restrain myself from doing a little deconstructing—
“Electronic-paper display . . . that looks and reads like real paper”? Putting aside how this saves trees, it takes a lot of marketing chutzpah to compare whatever even a high-definition screen can produce to real paper. And besides, when it comes to book pages, it’s not as much about looks as it is about feel; and I suspect that even Amazon is years away from developing the capacity of what they call “electronic-paper” to simulate that tactile reality.
“No syncing”? I admit I’m old and conservative about these kinds of matters and basically illiterate--if that’s the correct word--when talking about anything having to do with electronics or computers. I’m clueless when it comes to know what to do with my cell phone other than making and receiving calls, or what I would do with a Blackberry if I had one, or what else to do with my Apple laptop other than use it for writing and accessing the Internet; so to tell me I would not have to do any “syncing” if I were so foolish as to spend $359 for a Kindle, is not really very comforting or likely to cause me to rush to the landline or cell phone. Sorry, I of course should have said, to buy one on-line.
Nor do I want to order a “book” while in “the back of a taxi.” If you think the idea of doing that is attractive, I suspect you haven’t recently been careened around in one in New York City.
Nor am I enticed by having access, that’s the word, right, to “98 of 112 current New York Times Best Sellers.” I’m such a book snob that I wouldn’t be caught buying any of the 98 much less the full 112. On the other hand, if one of them could be discretely delivered to me in only one minute in the privacy of a taxi . . . who knows what I’d do.
But give me a real, tactile, creaky book to curl up with by the fire. One where I can hear the pages as I turn them. (I suspect that a Kindle beeps.) Give me something to read that has heft so that when I soon stretch out on the couch and rest it on my chest I can feel it literally attaching itself to me. Give me something that when I open it I am enveloped by the sweet, woodsy smell of real paper.
And, most important, when I as quickly as possible drift toward sleep and let what I’m reading slip to my chest I want to know that the warmth it generates to secure my dreams is from an organic thing—a book—and not from an electronic thing--a Kindle screen--which, for all I know, might be emitting something while I surreptitiously devour Danielle Steel’s Best Seller that will surely give me cancer.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
6:17 AM
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