Quote:
Originally Posted by cfrizz
However, those of us who are willing to still grow & learn & change will enjoy what life has to offer a whole lot more than stubborn old farts like him.
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Are you so sure about that?
Take, say, ebook readers. It's a good assumption that all of us in this discussion like ebooks, or we wouldn't be here in the first place. I'm certainly one of them. You'll have to pry my PRS-505 out of my cold dead hands. Quite literally, actually -- when I was in the hospital, the one thing I wanted from home was my Sony Reader.
But do I enjoy my books
more than someone who's also fond of books but who doesn't read them electronically? I don't think so. I don't find myself enjoying a book on the Reader more than I do the same book, or an equivalent, on dead trees. Nor did I find books less enjoyable a couple of years ago, before I bought it. I've
always enjoyed, and been obsessed with, books. I remember as a very young child wanting to take my books on a family camping trip because I couldn't bear to be without them. (thankfully for the books, my mother put her foot down) I still buy printed books, and I still enjoy them, even as I buy (and collect from PG) electronic books, and in some cases replace pbooks with ebooks for matters of sheer space (space matters; I have a
lot of books).
There are tactile pleasures to using an ebook reader. For me, it's the feel of sliding it out of its stretch cover ... I make sort of a ritual of it, like I always have with pbooks. Then there's opening the case, and switching it on, and the feel of the buttons under my fingers. One of the reasons I bought a leather case for it is the smell, too. Yes, I'm one of
those people: I'm more interested in the texture of my clothes than their color, too. Think of it as a meal: some people just want to load in the food and refuel with the proper quantity of calories, vitamins, and so on, while others want to enjoy all the sensations of eating: the interplay of textures, the subtle flavors, etc.
But there are also pleasures in reading pbooks -- the weight of the book, the feel of the pages, and so on. There's the smell of ink in new books (have you ever noticed how different soy ink smells?) and ... well, time ... in old ones. There's a reason I didn't leave the AAUW book sale last week until they were ready to lock the doors, and a reason I have literally thousands of books within ten feet of where I'm sitting. I really, really like books, and not just for their content. There are some I have bought even after I already had them as ebooks because I wanted those particular books in tangible form.
So for me, I come down somewhere on the border. I obviously love ebooks or I wouldn't be here, and wouldn't be inseparable from my ebook reader. But I love pbooks as well, and wouldn't want to give all of them up either. I enjoy them
both for different reasons. And I'm not going to condemn someone who puts a different weight on those factors, any more than I'd condemn someone because they like hot peppers more than I do but garlic not as much.
I'm a bit of an oddball, technologically. I pick and choose the things I like the best, and I'm not constrained by anyone else's opinions of what I "should" want due to the date of its invention. For instance, sitting in front of me are a laser pointer and a fountain pen. A green laser pointer, I might mention, and it would be blue if I could afford it. I remember when lasers lived only in SF stories, so I get a kick out of the fact I use one to play with my cat and annoy the local mockingbirds (they'll chase that dot all over the place, just like the cat). It's a laser; what's not to like? And I happen to
like writing with a fountain pen. It feels good. I also have, just that I can see without moving, various gel pens, markers, one of those Sharpie ultra-fine writing pens, a mechanical pencil, and one of those complicated Pilot liquid-ink things that promises, this time, not to leak in my pocket. But I like my fountain pen the most, even though its technology long predates any of those. I don't like it because the tech is old (the pen itself is quite new; it's a Waterman "Phileas") ... I like it because it feels good in my hand and writes the way I like.
Just because something is new, like, say, that Pilot pen, doesn't mean it's necessarily more enjoyable to use, and just because something's old, like my fountain pen, doesn't mean it's not pleasant for its user. I also find the history of ancient Rome more interesting than what was on TV last week. Rushing to adopt the newest of everything makes no more sense, and perhaps not even as much, as rejecting it in favor of the tried and true. We didn't suffer for millennia until the invention of today's pens, and if something better turns up tomorrow, that doesn't make all the fun we had writing today disappear.
In short, if someone enjoys what they have, why should they adopt something different -- or change so they can enjoy something different -- when they're
already happy? Would I be happier if I stopped enjoying my pbooks, and restricted myself solely to ebooks? I make that experiment every time I'm away from home for more than a few hours, and the answer is that I would not. I'm quite happy with what life has to offer. Some of it is new and modern and high-tech -- writing this post, for instance, or playing an online game with thousands of people across the world, or, yes, reading a book on my PRS-505. Some of it is decidedly old -- writing a letter to my aunt with a fountain pen, planting another variety of tomato in my garden, or reading one of the pbooks I bought at the book sale last week. But the mixture is my choice, and if my preferences are not the same as yours, it absolutely does
not mean that I'm not enjoying life every bit as much.
And as for Andy Rooney ... well, I express my opinion in MobileRead posts for free. He expresses his on 60 Minutes for a whole lot of money. So he may be on to something there.