We’re in the middle of house renovations at the moment. Dust and chaos assault every corner; we’re camping in the few unaffected rooms and trying not to count the time remaining, for fear we’ll weep.
On a daily basis, I remind myself it’ll be worth it. One of the things that will exist in the ‘new’ home is something I’ve longed for since I was old enough to realise you could choose what your space looks like. It’s what I’m (pretentiously) calling a ‘reading room’, though I don’t suppose Karl Marx will be along any time soon to write the Communist Manifesto there. We’re lining all of one room with bookshelves, aiming to consolidate our thousands of books into one place.
Serendipitously, this room opens up onto the garden, so my current fantasies involve curling up in a chair alongside the books, glass of wine in hand, breeze floating gently in from the open garden doors. About as far from our current life in a builder’s yard as it’s possible to get.
***
Last weekend, one of my best friends visited from San Francisco; the first time we’d met up in four years. It was every bit as brilliant as you’d imagine. We’re as alike as it’s possible for two culturally different people to be, so meeting up with her is like meeting up with an American version of myself (admittedly, since she’s smart, hilarious, and beautiful and lives in an incredible city, this is probably just wishful thinking on my part).
Within the first five minutes, we were talking about books – typical for us. K, as befits someone living in California, is a huge iPad devotee. She reads, she told me, exclusively on the iPad now; and her toddler daughter is so used to books being interactive that she prods ‘real’ books to make the pages light up or flaps open.
‘When we’re back in the US’, K informed me, ‘I’m throwing a party to give away all my books. I have no need for them any more’.
It'll take an awful lot of e-readers to fill this space.
We were driving at the time, and I nearly swerved off the road. ‘You’re GIVING AWAY your books?’ This is a woman who reads a lot, whose emotional attachment to words on a page is pretty much the same as mine. But here we were, utterly diverging. I was in the middle of knocking a house around to accommodate my reading matter, and she was streamlining hers, keeping it all archived electronically and having no need for the physical item any more. It was a real food-for-thought moment. If a passing acquaintance had told me the same, I’d have dismissed it; but when your emotional twin proposes something, it really slows down the thought process.
***
There was a report published this week in the UK stating that three children in ten in the UK don’t have a single book in their households. This provoked enormous outcry, as of course it should. But in the context of my weekend conversation, it made me think. How long before having no physical books in the house is the norm, not the exception? Of course, this wasn’t what the study meant, but it’s a very real possibility.
Will this change our perception of reading? Could you get rid of all your books in favour of an electronic reader? And what would you DO with all that shelf space?
(image c/o www.letcreativitybegin.blogspot.com)
No books at all? That actually makes me feel a little panicky.
I have given away thousands of books over the years, but still have bookcases bulging. I use and enjoy the Kindle, but am not ready to only read that way- bookshops are too much fun for that.
I like the idea of your reading room- I actually attempted something like that once but it got overrun with prams and furniture and kiddie junk. (Now there are no prams in there, but no books either- it’s a dining room, office, homework room, blogging area, read the paper away from the football room.)
I do have a Kindle, and I love it. But handy as it is, to me it can’t replace the pleasure of a book as a physical object. I’ve bought a good few books for the Kindle, but they’ve almost all been quite fluffy, light reads – the sort of books you may well turn to again but don’t particularly treasure. When it comes to books I care about, only the physical object will do. I not only like feeling the physical book in my hands (I’m ridiculously anal about looking after books – I never crack spines, and I hate it when covers get based and creased), but I love looking at my books on their shelves – a few shelves of silver-grey Persephones, another of Virago Modern Classics, every book by each of my favourite authors lined up side by side, the beauty of good book design on proud display. And then there are the books that have sentimental value – the one I shoved in my rucksack on a student summer that changed my life, the books I took on honeymoon. For me, scrolling down my Kindle menu just can’t replace that.
Who was it who said that there is nothing that furnishes a room as well as books? I’m paraphrasing terribly there, I know, but you get the gist. Like you, Sarah, I’ve always wanted a library. Like you, I rejigged my house a few years ago and spent a small fortune on custom made bookshelves all around one room to get just that. Said bookshelves are now groaning under the weight of all our books, others are ranged in tottering piles around the house, and I love them all. It’s my favourite room in the house, a TV free zone, and people gravitate in there and comment on it all the time.
Now, for all that, I’m no Luddite. I bought a Kindle a few months ago and love it with a passion reserved only for my iPhone and my first-born child. Now, when I want to buy a book, I buy on kindle if possible – only if unavailable in e-book format do I buy hardcopy. This saves on valuable space.
However, my library dream had another facet; I always wanted to pass it down to my daughter. I love the idea of filling it with classics, books I love, recommend and would want to read again. For this, the kindle has done me a huge favour; now, if there is a book I know I’ll cherish, want to keep and pass on, I buy a physical copy; anything else, I buy on kindle.
In my opinion e-books give us the opportunity to have the best of both worlds. They shouldn’t be used as an excuse to eliminate one of those worlds entirely.
And is it just me, or is there something inutterably sad about a 2 year old tapping a book and expecting it to light up?
I’ve had a sony reader for a few years and I love it, it’s wonderful when travelling. However books don’t need to boot; can be read in the bath without worrying about ruining €100-€200 of technology; won’t break if dropped (well not much anyway) and don’t cost 21% more due to VAT!
Apart from the VAT issues, there’s also the DRM issue, there’s the issue that at the moment for a lot of ebooks, if you’re not careful where you buy that book you bought won’t be readable on a new device in a few years. Also, books aren’t as universally availble as paper can be. I can walk into Hoggis Figgis and get a US edition of a book, often US editions that aren’t published here and I’m good, I can also go onto Amazon or the Book Depository and do the same. However I can’t do the same with ebooks, the rights issues are a mess. Ebooks aren’t fixed yet and until then I don’t trust them as much as paper. I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of all the books I have but it might be a good thing for those ones I might occasionally browse. I can see it being big with my cookery books though, the ability to search a bunch of books for a recipe would be golden!
Wind me up about this topic and you really get me going, I’ve been involved a few times in debates about this at conventions. My day job is Librarian and while I welcome ebooks and their availability, the fact that 4 ebooks are the same cost as 5-6 (at least) physical books doesn’t make it library friendly! And let’s not get into the debate that one of the Publishers is limiting the number of loans!
It has always been a dream of mine to have a reading room, something I mentally design and plan regularly. I would rather have a beautifully furnished and organised reading room in my house than a guest room, an office or any other kind of room usage you can think of.
I have a Sony Reader, bought for my by a technologically minded friend who understands my love of reading and figured it would be a good gift. But I haven’t used it. As far as I’m concerned, you can’t beat the feeling of holding and owning and shelving an actual, physical book.
Whatever it is, the smell, the feel of the paper between your fingers, or the sensation you get when you close the cover knowing you’ve enjoyed every individual page as it was written – there’s just something special about a book that an electronic device can’t replace. I’ll be hanging on to my hard copies thanks very much!
I have a much loved favourite tome that I was given in 1998 when I was just finishing university. It moved with me to every home I rented over the next few years, to the home my boyfriend and I shared, to the house we bought as husband and wife. It’s not in the best condition these days, but it’s lived everywhere I have and is a book I return to time and again. A couple of years ago I met the author at the Hay Festival and asked her to sign it. Inside I’d written the date I’d first read it and I explained to the author how it was such a favourite and how it was slightly battered by overuse and she appeared really touched. She signed the book and wrote a very sweet, personal message. You just can’t get this with an e-book.
And the name of this book is?
Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels. It won the Orange Prize in 1997.
Yeah, I think with books I kind of fetishise the object itself. I’m also someone who will literally not buy a book if I don’t like the font, or if the shape of the book or something else about its manufacture annoys me. Body font is IMPORTANT! I don’t want all my books to look and ‘feel’ (I mean as I’m reading them) the same.
I do frequent culls of books: not because they’re not important to me, but because they are. I don’t want to keep EVERY book I’ve ever read/ bought/ been given. Just the ones that meant something to me.
I love shelves of books in a way that I just don’t love shelves of cds. I don’t get this. It really could be the primal aesthetic reason: book spines are beautiful, cd spines make me think ‘college’, ’20s’, ‘clutter’. ps. I’m a musician.
I also attach memories to physical copies of books.. the Truman Capote that is the replacement for the one a dude I liked gave me in college (& which had to be the same edition).. the copy of Franny & Zooey I bought from the secondhand guy outside the ferry terminal (Manhattan side, obv) when I was in high school.. the copy of The Best of Myles I read in bed when I was seeing that guy who had the beautiful house in Dun L.. I’d read across from the huge open window after he’d go to work.
I’d actually love to hear about people’s experiences around e-readers and memory? As in.. do you have any?
Ebooks are fantastic for information and not having to lug around heavy reference tomes when I’m working away from home is wonderful but nothing beats a book. As Aisling says it’s a sensual experience. When I think back to the books I loved as a child I remember not just the stories but the rough feel of the paper under my fingers, the way the plastic cover on a library book felt warm and smooth and slightly tacky under your hands when you read it in the summer sun. Then there’s the smell of books, the wonderful musty smell of second hand or the “new book smell” you get when you open a new publication for the first time. I think that’s probably what makes book lovers so passionate about their books – they’re hard wired into us via our senses. It’s an emotional thing. I know that even though I do most of my research on line or use digital sources these days I’ll always keep a shelf of key reference books – a proper big heavy dictionary or Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. For some reason the digital versions just don’t seem to cut it.
I too dream of a reading room (I imagine it lined with IKEA Billy bookcases, with a fireplace and a comfy chair, and with glass doors on the bookcases to prevent guests from mucking up my perfect filing system…) and there is no way I could get rid of any of my books, let alone all of them. I have been leaning more and more towards e-books for traveling, but if I read an e-book I really like, I buy the print edition. (The cost of this practice may well be contributing to the fact that I still live with my parents. But anyway.) Books to me serve a whole other purpose besides reading; my bookshelves are like photo albums or a scrapbook – each of those books is a memory of whatever was going on in my life when I read it. I love physical books and always will. An e-book will never do it for me, I’m afraid. (Sorry, trees!) And the thought of a child in a book-free house just fills me with dread.
I could never imagine giving them away. I even get sweaty palms when people see them and say, “Oooh, do you’ve any good books? I need something to read on holiday…” (which I hear as, “Can I take one of your lovely books, bend it back on itself, crease the spine, fold down the corners and smear in sticky sunscreen?”). Although GOING to an I’m-giving-all-my-books-away party… I’d definitely be up for that.
Nooooo! That made me feel ill just thinking about it.
What about all those lovely coffee table books? The well-thumbed school anthologies? The illustrated craft books?
E-readers are useful, especially for large textbooks etc, but you will have to prise my favourite paper books out of my lifeless hands.
I’m an avid reader and I would happily get rid of all the books in my house, if I could. I don’t like clutter and I actually prefer the physical experience of reading on the kindle (lighter and easier on my semi-arthritic hands).
I love the stories. I have no attachment at all to the physical thing.
I too feel a panic at the thought of getting rid of my books. I’ve moved cross-country twice in the past 11 years, and culled my collection both time, but still brought more than 20 boxes of books I simply could not live without, even if I never read them again. I admit it’s a form of narcissism: these books are a mirror. They tell me who I am, they tell visitors who I am. They’re my history and my company.
I help run a community theater up here at the northern tip of Appalachia. “Glee” has inspired a wave of interest in theater and performing – hurray! – so we got a lot of young people at our latest set of auditions. The auditions were cold readings from the script, and these kids simply could not read aloud.
It had never occurred to me what a basic skill this was. Do parents actually read to their kids from iPads and Kindles? Hard to imagine.
The idea of a bookless world fills me with horror. Books have been my escape and my comfort all my life. I don’t spend money on clothes or shoes; it goes on books. The story is enhanced by the book, otherwise it is just data. The idea of not opening an old book and having the musty smell waft up makes me very sad indeed. I’d need a bigger house to have a reading room or library, but every single room (except for the bathroom, because of the steam from the bath) has book cases and shelves in. They’re part of me.
I’m halfway between you and your twin. I’ve stopped reading paper books. It’s mostly audiobooks – but Kindle on iPad too. Yet – I do drool over a nice library room and I love our big book shelf stuffed with books of all shapes and sizes. Could never start chucking them out. Even though I won’t be adding to it.
I was starting to form the theory that people who say they could never switch from paper to electronic have never actually tried it. But going by what Anna says that’s obviously not true of everyone.
I used to say I could never switch myself (I hate reading on a PC) but struggled with holding & lighting books in bed for years… and the iPad solves all those problems, so I can easily forfeit the smell of paper etc. All romanticism aside, functionally the iPad is so much better than a book.
This topic reminds me of people who hate automatic cars and say they could never drive without a gear stick. Yet if automatic cars existed first and someone suggested adding a manual gear stick, they’d be locked up by the very same people. I understand why they cling to their gear sticks, but still find the whole thing amusing.
Obviously there’s a lot more in books to get attached to than a gearstick.
Whenever I see one of those stupid home improvement TV shows, or visit someone who lives in spotless, minimalist splendour, I think “Yes, very nice, but where do you put all your books?” And then I remember, oh yeah, those *are* all your books. And 90% of them are about home improvement anyway.
But lately, I suppose all the books could be neatly stored away in a small drawer. After all, I stopped thinking “Very nice, but where’s all your music?” a few years ago
I honestly think there’s a place for both but cannot ever imagine the E-book taking over useful and all as it is.
Recently came across an old diary I kept while travelling. It was faded and battered and parts were not very legible – my handwriting and rough handling both to blame. But as I flicked through it a few dried grass leaves fell out from one page and when I checked I instantly remembered exactly where I was when I wrote it. It was on a beach in Sardinia and the day of a total solar eclipse. It was unusually breezy and when the sun was covered the whole place fell eerily silent and chilly and all you could hear was this incredibly mournful wind. Blowing all over the beach were these bits of dry sea grasses and I’d stuck a few in the page I’m been writing on.
I’m not sure had I just made a note in a word document or blog post if I’d have been able to remember it now so vividly and think the sensual aspect of holding and owning a book play a huge role in enjoying what’s actually written.
I simply couldn’t; I like the object as much as like reading. I actually spend a lot of time looking at my books on the shelves, picking them up, opeing them, putting them back. Choosing my next book to read is a real pleasure. I can’t even get rid of some copies I own twice!
I am not saying I will never get an e-reader; that’s a possibility as I think it is really practical when you’re on the go. Thinking about it, I would probably buy a physical copy of the books I would read on the e-reader!!
Hello all – thanks so much for your comments! Seems like we’re mostly in violent agreement here, though I was fascinated by Sasha’s perspective. I really identify with everyone who says it’s about the physical qualities of the book and/or the memories that a particular, well-worn copy might hold. I, too, struggle to see how that’s replicable on an e-reader, but maybe it’ll happen in time.
Jane: I don’t share your sadness about a toddler who expects a book to be interactive; maybe that’s because I know this particular toddler (who is adorable, and has many ‘real’ books as well as access to the electronic variety!). I think it’s just the world kids are going to be growing up in. Your comment raised an interesting point for me, though; I’ve kept loads of my childhood books, now read by my own children. Again; how do we do this in electronic format? I think it’s all so interesting.
Sarah, I think one of the great gaps in the possibilities of ebooks is in the area of children’s books. I believe it’s really important for kids to have the experience of books from an early age, and by that I mean not just the words and the stories, but the physical objects themselves. They need to turn the pages, point to the pictures that interest them; flick back and forth through their favourite bits; even feel the paper and the tactile elements that are included in many children’s books. How can you have a touch-and-feel book on an iPad? Or a pop-up book?
Sometimes I think about the future of bookshops and feel depressed. I wonder if the only future for many bookshops is to sell more and more children’s books for this reason, that they really are just not the same in a digital format.
I’m very glad to hear that the toddler in question has “real” books too, because I really do feel it would be very sad not to experience them.
I move house every so often and I have worked hard to reduce my book collection to my “Desert Island box of Books”. Thats one fairly large box filled with the books I can’t bear to part with – about 35-40 books.
If a new book wants to go into the box, then another one has to come out. The rest I give away or swap with someone else. It helps to keep my hoarding tendancies in check and makes packing up to move house easier.
I’m with you Sarah. Twice a year every year when the local parish Christmas and summer fetes come around I stand in front of my beloved groaning bookshelves for hours steeling myself to donate something and free up space for more. I just can’t part with any – I only ever manage one or two “duds” and then struggle to fit the 10 I buy onto the shelves. I have a Sony e-reader but it only contains the free classics it came with & I’ve not used it yet.
A home with no (physical) books! I’d rather live in a home with no fridge. Incidentally my music loving husband feels exactly the same about CDs and vinyl & doesn’t do downloads at all.
[...] First one is from The Antiroom, one of my favourite blogs, written by all women. I read it all the time, and by God you should too. This particular post is about books being replaced by Kindles and e-readers. And one woman’s dream of having a reading room. (Note: the ‘one woman’ I speak of is NOT me, although I share her dream). CLICK ME to read. [...]
I’m with Em and Jane Travers. I’m thinking of a kindle but not enthusiastically. The book space crisis grows as one gets older. I have a study with one wall booklined. Downstairs the sitting room and dining room alcoves are equally packed. I recently got an attic ladder and was able to put boxes up there to relieve pressure. Every Christmas there is a new space crisis. Oh, I forgot, the daughters rooms are stuffed. Whenever they move out I may have more room. My house here in France holds all the Summer reading since 2004. Showing off, I know.
I was in charge of the library in the school where I used to teach. One day a girl came in and was poking about looking lost. When I asked whether I could help her find something she said ‘I just came in because I love the smell of the books’.
On giving away? Never. My mother’s Works of Tennyson given to her by an admirer, my aunt’s favourite childrens’ book ‘Terry and Starshine’, ‘Woodbrook’ by David Thomson, a two hundred and thirty year old account of the American War of Independence, spine missing, ‘Life and the Dream’, Mary Colum and lots more favourites.These are all precious.
Now I will quit this reading online and go back out in the sun to try and finish ‘Midnight’s Children’. I’m finding it a bumpy ride, I’m afraid.