Book lovers have emotional bond with paper

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by kfarmer

Readers have the consequence of removing a bunch of it, and homogenizing as much of the rest as possible. All your experiences are with the same unit (theoretically.. that's what Sony, etc would like to be the case), in the same quality, texture, smell, even typeface as everything else. There's little if any room for framing the art in any meaningful way.

Not so: Readers allow you to manipulate your content to improve your reading experience, for instance, by allowing you to select type sizes or light levels. Many of the devices or software readers (I use a few) allow you to select fonts, colors and even backgrounds... you can have lots of choices. I've seen plenty of books that had the wrong typeface used, or in the wrong size, or badly-printed and almost too light (or too thick) to read. With a paper book, you can't fix that. With a reader, you can.

And you can still select your reading location... just like with those smudgy paper thingies.

Originally Posted by kfarmer

I saw a real Van Gough on Monday. Taking a photo (had it been allowed) would not have given anything close to the visceral impact that seeing it, presented as it was, lit as it was, at the various distances I could observe it (from thank-god-for-glasses to you-can-count-the-hairs-of-the-brush).

I just looked at a Van Gough on my monitor. Looked pretty good! Unless they let you touch it, it doesn't matter much to me if you can make out individual hair strokes on a painting. I usually enjoy a painting by standing back from it and taking it all in, anyway!

Originally Posted by kfarmer

And I'm not saying otherwise. What I *am* saying is that that medium contributes greatly to the experience.

Read textbooks for content. For literature, the experience rules.

For literature, the content IS the experience. Everything else, especially the medium, is superfluous. The Three Musketeers isn't less of a classic because it's printed in a cheap paperback and read on a subway car. Great Expectations isn't great just because it's printed on fine stock and read in the Louvre. Content transcends delivery.

[kfarmer]

Originally Posted by Alisa

I just can't wax poetic about a mass-market paperback the same way I can about an original Rothko.

I find that remarkably sad.

[Puddytat purr]

Sex I think I read about that once

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Alisa

I just can't wax poetic about a mass-market paperback the same way I can about an original Rothko.

Surely you're not saying you couldn't wax poetic about The Thornbirds, say, just because you read it in a mass-market paperback? Or that you could wax poetic about the finely-printed and hidebound cover version of Jaws?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Puddytat purr

Personally I think covering that the content comes in isn't important, I have always found that when I'm reading I can disconnect from everything else around me and get totally 'in' to the book I'm reading. Therefore, the picture on the cover, whether it's paperback/hardback (altho I used to prefer paperback's cos they're easier to hold in one hand) or ebook, is not important. I find the fact that I can take out one ebook reader no matter where I am in a book extremely convenient, that way, if I finish one book, I can just scroll to the next book without having to worry whether I remembered to put it in my handbag!

Actually, I find I can hold my 505 in one hand better then any paperback. because with the paperback, I still need my other hand to help turn the pages. But with my 505 I can do it all with one hand.

As for the actual story, I can get into it just as easily with my 505 as I can with the pBook. I am one of the type of readers that usually has multiple books being read. So the 505 allows me to have them all with me at the same time and flip between them as the mood strikes me. With paper books, I'm not able to do that without a stack of books.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by kfarmer

I find that remarkably sad.

I don't. Save your pity. I'm happy that my imagination pulls me right into a book and everything else disappears. I don't have to fetishize a physical object to enjoy a great story.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Puddytat purr

Sex I think I read about that once

Can we get a review of that book please?

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Surely you're not saying you couldn't wax poetic about The Thornbirds, say, just because you read it in a mass-market paperback? Or that you could wax poetic about the finely-printed and hidebound cover version of Jaws?

I can wax poetic about a story. I can appreciate a lovely artisan printing of a great book, but I really don't care about the thousands of mediocre printings sitting on the shelves in my office. I care about the story I read in them. What's more, you know what I can really wax poetic about? A tree!

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

As in, "I think that I shall never see... a poem as lovely as a..."?

[kfarmer]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Not so: Readers allow you to manipulate your content to improve your reading experience, for instance, by allowing you to select type sizes or light levels. Many of the devices or software readers (I use a few) allow you to select fonts, colors and even backgrounds... you can have lots of choices. I've seen plenty of books that had the wrong typeface used, or in the wrong size, or badly-printed and almost too light (or too thick) to read. With a paper book, you can't fix that. With a reader, you can.

So if someone hands you a hand-written poem, with bad penmanship and an unsharpened pencil, you "fix" it for him?

The only thing that's attractive on that front is being able to increase the size of text for failing eyesight. None of the other so-called features are what I would call good. Definitely not a "fix".

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I just looked at a Van Gough on my monitor. Looked pretty good! Unless they let you touch it, it doesn't matter much to me if you can make out individual hair strokes on a painting. I usually enjoy a painting by standing back from it and taking it all in, anyway!

You haven't seen a Van Gough in real life, have you? I wouldn't *want* to touch it -- oils never do dry, anyway, and I don't want to leave my imprint on it. Not even to "fix" it.

Not being able to examine it up close, you miss out on so much: how much paint was used, or how much work was truly put into a particular feature, or even the technique itself. Like a newspaper photo, you *could* stay away and see an image, but you don't grok it until you get cozy with it.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

For literature, the content IS the experience. Everything else, especially the medium, is superfluous. The Three Musketeers isn't less of a classic because it's printed in a cheap paperback and read on a subway car. Great Expectations isn't great just because it's printed on fine stock and read in the Louvre. Content transcends delivery.

If that were true, we could just remove all whitespace, punctuation, margins -- any sort of formatting since that is, in fact, just trappings for the words. Aside from ridding the world of e e cummings (not necessarily something I'd weep over, personally ), you'd also make the whole text unreadable.

Content cannot transcend delivery. Every art form has encountered this fact throughout history. Every musical performance, every painting, every monologue. I could stand up and recite verbatim every great piece of literature ever written, and find myself facing a rather bored if not hostile audience. If delivery were irrelevent, I should be able to get as good a reception as from someone reading Shakespeare. For that matter, I could just buy a musical score and call that as good a concert as the 5th-grade band or the Royal Philharmonic. Even as abstract a thing as source code cannot rid itself of delivery, if you expect to communicate its meaning adequately -- there's a huge amount being spent on notation and syntax when you *could* just transmit opcodes.

But we know that's not the case. After all, without delivery, how do you actually *get* the content?

[kfarmer]

Originally Posted by Alisa

I don't. Save your pity. I'm happy that my imagination pulls me right into a book and everything else disappears. I don't have to fetishize a physical object to enjoy a great story.

Fetishize? You mean like you've done with a gadget?

[Alisa]

Actually I think legibility is a bit of a requirement for the content. Trying to overstate his position to the point it's ludicrous doesn't make yours any better. It's a cheap tactic.

I don't think you can equate a mass-produced printed copy of a book to an original hand-written document or a painting. They have the hand of the artist on them. The vast majority of smudgy old books, don't. They were designed by a print house to carry the content. That's like worshiping a shipping crate someone packaged the precious Van Gogh in. It doesn't get you any closer to the painting.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by kfarmer

Fetishize? You mean like you've done with a gadget?

What makes you think I fetishize my reader? It's a tool. When it breaks, I won't be upset. I enjoy using it but it's just a thing.

[kfarmer]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I'm not able to do that without a stack of books.

I, too, tend to be reading several things at once (when I get the opportunity to read). Yet I've never found the stack of books to be a problem. I've actually found them charming.

[kfarmer]

Originally Posted by Alisa

What makes you think I fetishize my reader? It's a tool. When it breaks, I won't be upset. I enjoy using it but it's just a thing.

But you (in the plural sense of this thread) are sitting there telling me that it's difficult for you to enjoy reading when nasty, dirty paper gets in the way. You want clean, light objects to facilitate your reading pleasure. You don't even care if they break because you can always get another.

Hate to say it, but anonymous, clean, lightweight, and disposable are just one noun away from being any number of catered fetishes.