[SameOldStory]

"HD??"

Maybe he likes to drop trendy words like HD. I mean that HDTV is trendy and he just wants to show that he's "in the grove".

"I have been reading a lot on my iPad recently (what constitutes "a lot" to him? One or two chapters? Three?) , and I have some complaints — not about the iPad but about the state of digital reading generally. Reading is a subtle thing, and its subtleties are artifacts of a venerable medium: words printed in ink on paper. Glass and pixels aren’t the same. (Does he miss the clipity clop of horse drawn buggies? I know that I do. Ask any of the pioneers. I'm sure that they would prefer to spend 3 mouths crossing the continent along with the sickness and death that added so much to the experience.)

When I read a physical book, I don’t have to look anywhere else to find out how far I’ve gotten. The iPad e-reader, iBooks, tries to create the illusion of a physical book. The pages seem to turn, and I can see the edges of those that remain. But it’s fake. (And there it is in a small nut shell. He wants a paper book, nothing else is real.)

"Your poems — no matter how wretched or wonderful they are — will never look as good as Robert Hass’s poems in the print edition of “The Apple Trees at Olema."

I suppose that he prefers to buy leather bound, hand writen, books at his local scriptorium. I remember suffering through Kahlil Gibran books printed in plain type. I feel so humiliated.

"We need a digital readers’ guide — a place readers can find out whether the book they’re about to download is the best available edition."

I have some books in 2 or 3 DIFFERENT editions. And I will not part with them! Each one has been "updated" by the publisher. When I die my wife will just throw out "those old books". But to me they're gold. So if some idiot wants to make up a guide to prevent me from buying the newest edition that’s fine. So long as I can use it in my reader.

One point in his favor - he has grasped that DRM is bad.

News papers want to stay news papers. RIP news papers.