In another few weeks, I will be moving to another apartment in the same building in Manhattan where I have spent the past few years. While moving in itself is a traumatic event as everyone knows, my principal problem is books.
I have a huge collection of books. In the three or four major moves in my lifetime I have culled, boxed, given away and donated thousands of books. During each nesting experience, however, I have acquired yet more books and have repeated the culling process each time. I could never pass a bookstore without buying one or more books.
The fact is that I am probably a bibliophile in my soul. I love books. Reading books takes up much of my time, when I am not writing books. For years I have collected sets of leather bound books by favorite authors. It is a valuable collection. I have leather bound books by Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dickens, Hardy, O’Henry, Balzac, Henry James, Turgenev, Twain, de Maupassant, and on and on. To list them all would make this essay endless.
I also have duplicate copies of my own books in every language in which they have been translated and published. They amount to hundreds of copies. I will never part with them. They are as much a part of me as my DNA.
I love reading novels, older novels and contemporary novels. My tastes are eclectic. I have many non-fiction books as well, on politics, history and religion with particular emphasis on American history, which is yet another passion.
Now here is the kicker.
I am a pioneer in electronic publishing. All of my books have been reversed from major publishers and been digitized since the late nineties. I have for years been touting the inevitable switch from print to digital. It was a no brainer bound to happen. And it has reached the tipping point.
I made the first pitch for digital books on handheld reading devices at the Las Vegas International Consumer Electronics Show for the SONY reader when it was introduced in 2007. I bought one of the first Kindles and for kicks have been collecting other reading devices like the iPad and the Nook.
For years I have been addressing groups on the joys of reading content on screens. At first my reception had been hostile. I have listened to same complaints ad infinitum. They all have the same ring. I love the tactile feel of a book. I love the smell of ink and paper. I love to hold them. Books are my friends. I like to see them on my shelves. A curse on screen-read books.
My response is always the same. I feel your pain. I cite other examples of lost items, both corporal and emotional: The clip clop sound of a horse’s hooves on city streets, the beauty of horse drawn vehicles, the smell and sounds of sizzling logs in fireplaces, the fading art of writing letters, the lost joys of childhood, the reassuring scratches made by pen points dipped in inkwells, my mother’s cooking, the reassuring house calls of the family doctor, the old New York Herald Tribune, penny candy, knickers, saddle shoes, the Brooklyn Dodgers. It didn’t bring tears to the eyes of my audience and did not soften the blows to my advocacy of digital books.
I would explain to those early listeners and those I speak to today that there is a lot to say for the psychic joys of a physical book, but, in the end, there is one hard truth that is inescapable. The heart of a book is its content. Content trumps all. When all is said and done reading is a one on one communication system, an author’s presentation of his or her insights, stories, opinions, a distillation of his or her thoughts, instructive, inspirational, original, and, in its own way, a miracle of transference through words. I suppose one can find numerous other definitions, both literary and instructive. Content and its dissemination is the beating heart of civilization. Enough said. I’m sure the point is made.
In one tiny device, Kindle, Nook, iPad et al, I can fit the content of every book on my shelves and can, if I chose, soon be able to download at my whim the content of my choice among most books ever published since the discovery that content can be portable.
That said, it does not diminish my love of physical books as objects of admiration and devotion.
But here I am culling once again. I find I am being more ruthless than ever with less second thoughts or pangs of conscience on what to keep and what to discard. I no longer really want to shelve paperbacks and am making my culling judgments on the basis of my emotional attachments, my love of the content presented by those authors who have truly moved me, whose content has given me hours of pleasure and made a difference in my understanding of the human condition.
I will keep those books in my new apartment as a monument to my love of books and my favorite authors as well as a symbol of enduring friendship.
Oh yes, one more thought. While I can enjoy the sight of seeing many of my “friends” tucked comfortably on my bookshelves, I can now carry these “friends” everywhere I go and in both a physical and symbolic sense hold them close to my heart.
Categories: Books
Thanks for this thoughtful piece. I recognize myself as a book lover and you’re way ahead of me so far. It seems many of us need to let go of the old before we can enjoy the new. I look forward to saving a lot of space in my house -a lot, but not all- by moving content to a device. You’ve just warmed me up. Good luck!
I enjoyed this piece. It made me think about change, whether it is aging or new technologies that make older “things” obsolete or the weather. Then there is downsizing like you are doing. I love the physical presence of books also and I understand how the real importance of a book or words is their survival so people now and in the future will have access to the content. But I pray to the book God to never let 3D books become relics. And what if the Internet crashes and content is lost. I know I will always have books around even if it is a precious few.
I’m a book lover too, love having books on shelves, tactile feel, blah blah blah.
It’s a different world we’re in. These people who buy stuff off of Kindle are indeed different. They’re just readers. They read books, they don’t care about covers and art and tactile experiences any more than music loving kids today give a rat’s ass about album covers and the thrill of vinyl.
You shouldn’t worry about converting old farts who can’t make the transition. It’s not worth the effort. The challenge you and I face is reaching out to readers who just read. We need to respect them and reach out to them, because they’re the new generation. They’re the ones who’ll be feeding us and reading our stuff.
It’s much more critical to me than you, my friend. Because my first book came out two years ago from Simon & Schuster and I don’t mind telling you the whole thing was a nightmare. You they might go to some marketing effort for. Me? They delayed and delayed, they chickened out of publishing in September because they thought I’d get lost, postponed to January as soon as the books were printed. One week later the LATimes ran a favorable review and there weren’t any books to buy. It finally came out in January when nobody buys books and it went into the toilet. Now the blame is on me and no agent will look at my stuff.
So I’m self-publishing on Kindle. It’s been less than a week and I;m finding readers, not all of them are my friends. Publishing on Kindle is my way of surviving and getting past these lame-ass gatekeeper pricks
I’ll show them!
Brendan McNally
Author of GERMANIA, A Novel
And FRIEND OF THE DEVIL on Kindle
You are not alone. My personal remedy is simple to state, hard to do. I give anything I just read away. We have a library store that accepts donations and my book club participants are always in acquisition mode. My reward? I feel virtuous and I don’t have to buy another bookcase.
Now, that doesn’t help with those books crowding each other on my wall to wall book cases in two rooms. Here’s what I plan. A book party where visitors must take five books to their own homes. (I have sheltered the precious tomes.) As with you and others, I have digital versions of many of my favorites and must overcome the comfort of owning the physical volume. Sharing is better than owning. Well, I keep telling myself that.
As for my own books, I spend time reformatting for download to the Kindle. Probably should do the same for the Nook. Some will be purloined and published on Google but I won’t know about that in real time.
Gatekeeper pricks be damned, it’s the 18 month to 2 year wait before we hit the shelves I want to avoid.
I am a female of a “certain age”, and have (like you) acquired a huge collection of books, which keeps growing. I understand your point about content. However, the attraction of the electronic device (which I have not yet purchased)is strictly for travel. With weight restrictions on luggage, etc., the electronic device makes more sense than the 5-10 books I usually can’t leave home without. I think I will always prefer to read real, live books because of the feel, smell, and the overall experience, and enjoy the look of them on the shelves. I do not believe that books as we know them will disappear even in this digital age.
From the moment you mentioned your dilemma with moving your books, I could suddenly smell my own. And the ones at the library (especially on the basement floor) and used bookstores…the aroma that proves they are books. I feel your pain.
Despite digital formats, when I publish my books, all I picture in my head is hardbacks with beautiful covers. That proves that I agree with Lauren G. Life without books is too much like Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. That’s good and bad.
An interview with Mr. Adler. If you see this link. I want to say hello.
http://www.eclectica.org/v12n2/glixman_adler.html
You have captured my sentiments on books down to the last expression, and you have explained their value and the integrity of the authors very well. Physical books are not only enlightening and entertaining but they carry the history of the world, and without books to read and study we have no documented past. E-books are excellent supplements to physical books in that they are expedient in their ability to access an entire library, and they are convenient to carry – but they are also easier to lose. And they cannot and do not replace the worth of physical books that allow readers to feel and smell the paper, and to inhale the essence of creation written and bound inside a unique cover that can be passed on for years to come. You are privileged to have such a library of creative minds in your own home; perhaps an overwhelming quandary to move but a valued tradition of human arts that you are so faithfully carrying on. Thanks for reminding us that quick and easy is a convenience, not a replacement for the real thing.
Warren: terrific piece. I remember as an inveterate reader (even cereal box copy to isolate myself from my quarreling family at breakfast) receiving at 2 separate birthdays a black leather bound copy of the Collected Robert Louis Stevenson and a brown (suede) leather copy of Victor Hugo. Someone stole the Victor Hugo, and I mourn it still.
As for the continuing argument about what/how to read: the content’s the same, only the delivery system is different…
Euh, non pas trop…