Books Kindled

Books Kindled

    The arguments for and against all make sense; a Kindle or similar e-reader lets you download books instantly (indeed, my library now has an entire section on their site dedicated to the new arrivals of downloadable books), the back-lighting can be adjusted for day or night reading, you don't have to lug around a ton of books when travelling, and once done (finished or not) you can simply hit the delete button and off it goes, never to clutter your bookshelf.  And of course, the arguments against an e-reader are almost exactly opposite those listed above, some of the reasons making sense and some just a matter of stubbornness and not logic.  Some have written (as I have) about the change, the lack of a "feel" of paper on your fingers or the heft of holding a book, the decoration of a finished book being added to a collection on a shelf, the giving of a book passed onward.  But overall, reading is reading and while I might prefer the old school of flipping through magazines and placing a bookmark in a book (if only to see how far I've read and how much more I have to go), I totally support those becoming Zen-like and reading even more than I do, all while their shelves empty and instead fill with other objects of affection, which in many cases, are photos of grandchildren.  And there the argument would have remained, until author Jen Adams and her new book, The Books They Gave Me, threw this into the works: At home, as I shelved my boyfriend's gift book, I touched the spines of other books I'd been given by men I've loved.  The beautiful hardcover edition of the complete poems of William Blake.  A picture book, a tongue-in-cheek response to the rise of the e-book.  A slim little paperback reprint of lyric poetry.  Each of them, I realized, said something important about who we were at that moment.  The books I own tell my life story, and the ones given me by the people I love offer special insight into the experiences that have made me who I am...In this age of the e-book, part of the appeal of being given a hard copy book as a gift is its tangible timelessness.  Books are real.  You can give a books as a gift.  Kindles are great for reading on the subway, and they get people to read more than they might otherwise, but they are flatly unromantic.  Paper books offer a king of permanent charm.  They don't expire, they can't disappear in a power surge.  Books last.  I'm not with any of those men anymore, but I still have the books they gave me.

    Decades ago, my standard practice while reading was to mark the pages.  Words I didn't understand I would look up and add the definition to the highlighted word; at the end of chapters I would write often-extensive summations of what I felt the chapter was expressing, even questioning some of the premises presented (this was a practice only to non-fiction books I read).  Looking back now, I sometimes question this "diary" of sorts, wondering why I was thinking that back then and where have I come since then.  My late-twenties and thirties showed many of my thoughts vastly different from my thoughts today; and yet, others are strikingly similar, even making me re-think some issues or wondering.  Where has my curiosity and spark from that time gone?...are those ideas and thoughts just hiding and waiting to be re-discovered?  Or are they gone for good?

    Several people close to me don't read at all, at least not for pleasure.  Idle time is spent watching the television or puttering around their apartment or listening to music.  And in their defense, who's to say that those time passages don't take them equally far away and transport them into their own distant worlds of imagination for a few minutes or hours.  Yes, you can pick up a book and feel its cover and within a few paragraphs, possibly be flooded with memories of where you were when you first read those pages, or who you were with, or the moment that you stopped reading the pages and glanced over at the person snuggled next to you and realized how content you were at that moment.  The same can also be said for that song which you rarely hear played, or that movie that you once saw in an art house, or that phrase that pops up unexpectedly at a dinner party.  Each can prove a trigger to a memory, a flashback good or bad to a time suddenly as fresh as the moment now. 

    One of the people who submitted their thoughts in author Jen Adams' book did so for Paulo Coelho's By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept, a book she marked and marked with her thoughts and then emphatically gave to her then-boyfriend, saying he had to read the book as well as her highlighted thoughts:...I had the urge to pick up the book and read through my notes.  I couldn't find the book.  And then I remembered that he'd never returned my copy.  And, like a flash, a post-breakup conversation resurfaced in my memory.  He had told me that after our breakup he'd carried the book with him and reread the story and all of my scribbles as an attempt to cling onto some piece of me when we were no longer speaking...As I sat on my knees, surrounded by piles of books, remembering all of this, it occurred to me that sharing books is an intimate act in a relationship.  If sharing music is considered an act of foreplay --which it is to me anyway-- then sharing books is definitely going all the way.  With music, you merely glimpse your infatuation's tastes.  Still, it's easy to tune out a song you don't particularly care for when you would rather listen to him talk or relish the comfort of his arms.  But with books, you pay attention.  You're reading words; you're consuming ideas and themes that move him; you're connecting intellectually.  Maybe even spiritually...I could be overthinking this.  But I can't help but feel a sense of loss knowing that my book, marked by my handwriting --the ideas and phrases that spoke to me now exposed, underlined, circled, highlighted-- is floating in the world...Just like a man I once loved.

    Visceral (which Merriam-Webster loosely defines as "coming from strong emotions and not from logic or reason") reactions are what books seem to emote.  Certainly not all of them, but now and then a book will prove a treasure, something you'll re-read someday (however as a Tom Cruise movie said, "someday really means never"); and parting with that book (my last copy, you say, hoping against hope that you'll get it back) can often prove more emotional than expected.  But the urge to share overrides this, the logic being that the words sitting frozen on your shelf are better off being released into the warm hands of another reader to thaw, a chance to let that person feel (at least, that is what you hope for) the same emotions that you felt when you first read it.  Pay it forward.  

    In reading author Adams' book, you may discover many of the books are not what you would have expected for while some are bestsellers, some are also children's books and some are foreign books;  some of the books are rather obscure.  But each has somehow touched a person and left a lasting memory.  You may have read many of the books she chose to list (about 200), and you may wish there were other books out there with similar themes...songs or movies or paintings that hit people's memories like a dart.  In a world where there is so much to read (electronic or otherwise), and so much to listen to, and so much to see (electronic or otherwise) it's good to step back and realize how fortunate we are to even have so many choices.  We can play a song or walk out in nature, or watch a movie or host a dinner, or read a book...or maybe, as we clean our shelves, re-read a memory.