May 31, 2011--Kindling

Two significant culture-shifting things were recently reported in the New York Times--

Amazon revealed that it is now selling more E-Books than book-books (105 E-Books are being sold for every 100 hardcover or paperback books); while a study from 2010 Census data revealed that for the first time in history married couples are no longer in the majority--only 48 percent of households include them. (Article linked below.)

I am an old-fashioned sort and so my household includes a married couple--Rona and me--but not a Kindle nor an E-Book is in sight. I mean downloaded.

There are good explanations for the decline in the number of married couples. As more women have moved into the work force living together out of wedlock for women has lost most of its traditional taboo and marriage has lost some of its normative force.

This is especially true for better-educated, more economically successful men and women, who, if they marry, tend to do so when older. For less-educated, poorer woman, who are more likely to be employed than their male counterparts, counterparts who increasingly have fathered children with them, fewer of these women than in the past are marrying at all. According to those who study these trends, marginally employed women are concluding that they can just about manage to support themselves and their children, but not their children's' fathers.

And so again, for the first time in history, fewer than 50 percent of families include married couples.

The E-Book thing, though, I find harder to understand.

So I clicked on the Amazon Website and found that not every book one might find to be of interest is available electronically. While you can get all the New York Times bestsellers via downloads to be read on Amazon's Kindle; while you can find all the Patricia Cornwells and james Pattersons you could want to take along to the beach; if, like me, you're a book snob (or have an addiction to American history) the electronic pickins are slim.

I was tempted to check out E-Books by more than the curiosity elicited by the report in the Times. At the moment I am reading Sean Wilentz's The Rise of American Democracy, an almost 5-pound book of 1,044 pages; and since I do a lot of my reading in bed, very early in the morning before Rona gets up, I have balance books of this size on my stomach, but the Wilentz book is so heavy that it gives me gas.

A Kindle, then, as much as I hate the idea of it, might work for at least this kind of literally heavy reading. And, since it looks as if books' read this way glow on the screen, the Wilentz in E-Book mode might make it possible for me not to have to turn on my night light and further disturb Rona.

But alas, though there are lots of Mary Higgins Clarks novels available, I cannot find anything by Wilentz or any of my favorite historians.

I thus accept the fact that I'll have to put up with stomach cramps. In addition, since I am more and more concerned that marriage is endangered, I have been thinking that all the kindling going on is probably contributing to that. So for the good of the cause, rather than cuddling with a Kindle, I'll continue to do mine with my books and Rona.