A Dragon in Sheep’s Clothing

GeekSugar posted a poll yesterday asking, “Do You Own a Kindle?”

None of the poll answers quite fit my response. No, I don’t own a Kindle. I wouldn’t even consider it because it’s too expensive. But even if someone offered one to me for free, would I really use it? Many fantasy/scifi books I like to read aren’t available for Kindle. Plus, I can get a used novel cheaper than buying a Kindle version.

But there are other drawbacks as well. I echo many of the comments at GeekSugar: I like the feel of a book in my hands, it’s nice to see how far you are through the book, and curling up with a book just feels warmer.

But what about size? The average trade paperback would be okay on a Kindle, but what about coffee table books? Even reading a newspaper or magazine on the Kindle would probably annoy me. Give me The Virginian-Pilot homepage or the physical front page of the paper over the Kindle any day. Why? I can see so much more at a glance.

Screenshots of reading the NYT on the Kindle make it look like you see one article at a time, or the main article first, I’m not sure which. How annoying.

Plus, there was one comment at GeekSugar that I’ve never thought of before but with which I agree wholeheartedly: you can share a book. I think I’ve always liked that about books, the ability to share. The number of books I checked out from various libraries from grade school through college is definitely in the hundreds. I would be only mildly surprised to find out that I have borrowed thousands. (Speaking of which, I couldn’t justify spending cash on Kindle books in order to research a term paper. I would probably never look at them after the semester is done.)

While on vacation recently, I went through a stack of books from my growing years to sort out the keepers. It was a combination of novels and picture books. When I was done, I immediately decided to offer the rest to my best friend who is homeschooling her children. There was joy in sharing the books that I had experienced, hoping that other young minds would have good experiences with them as well. And if her family already had any of the books I gave her, I told my friend to pass the extras along to the other homeschooling families she knows.

Could you pass on knowledge like this via Kindles? I think not.

Finally, there is still an art to creating books that make some a pleasure to use or read. Sure, the scifi books are pretty formulaic in design: same shape, same paper. I suspect that many trade paperbacks have more design in their cover art than in the layout of their contents.

But almost any other book has been designed. Even an instructional book on HTML or cascading style sheets has some design to it: margins that allow for tip boxes, icons to indicate the family or use of a particular tag, etc.

Not only would it be difficult at best to peruse a book on the Kindle featuring Ansel Adams work, it would altogether obliterate the presentation of his photography. The presentation adds to the experience and enhances the artwork within. Can a Kindle replace that? Can the design of digital readers evolve far enough to handle these types of books without sacrificing too much in the usability of the device itself?

No, I’ll take real books any day. And maybe someday someone will get them after I’m done and enjoy them all over again.

(Good golly, what if a 14th century monk who had painstakingly copied and created illuminated manuscripts could see us now?)