The Future of Books

Yesterday somebody asked me if I thought someday the physical book would be obsolete, replaced by the Kindle and its cousins. My answer is no. I use my microwave all the time, but I still have a stove and an oven, don’t I? I even still boil water for coffee rather than nuking it, because my instant sissy-coffee dissolves better when I pour water over the powder than when I add powder to hot water.

And while I can heat up the Thanksgiving turkey in the microwave—I’ve done so in the past—this year I plan to cook it in my oven. I like the oven better for holiday meals. Try making an apple pie in a microwave. Or don’t. If I could have two ovens, I would. That’s how much I like oven-based holiday cooking. Have I mentioned how much I like ovens?

“You can’t highlight with a Kindle,” somebody told me hopefully. (This from a soul concerned that the true book will die.) And that’s not true. You can. In fact now you can do so without destroying property. (Insert cheers from bifocal-wearing librarians.) No, you can’t dog-ear an e-book, but you can make highlights, bookmarks, clippings, and notes. You can even look up words in the dictionary without having to get off your bum. And when you travel, you can take an entire lug-free library.

Now, I’m not saying all this because I get a cut off of Kindle sales. I don’t own one, and I don’t plan to purchase one anytime soon.

I like paper. I like sitting on my bed stretched out with a book that has a binding. I like reading at the beach without having to think about how to adjust myself so the sun won’t glare on my little screen. I like feeling “how many pages to go” until I’m finished. I like hard-copy books. I like the smell of them, the feel of them, the sound of them.

But I also welcome those readers who prefer e-anything. See, the good news about this e-revolution is that people with Kindles download more books than they used to buy. Three-point-one times as many, in fact. And far be it from this novelist to stand in the way of progress.