A week from now I will be holding an iPad in my hot little hands--hands I hope are not too hot from the device itself. Lord knows my laptop has cooked certain body parts more than a few times. Thank god my baby-birthing days are over.
I'm wondering how the arrival of my iPad will change my life. And that became really apparent the other day when I read Anne Taylor Fleming's latest "Open City" column in the April issue of Los Angeles Magazine. Unfortunately LA Magazine's website doesn't run very many articles from the actual current issue. I guess they prefer their revenue stream in the "classic" print mode, so I'm doubting we'll see an iPad specific edition of the mag anytime soon. It doesn't appear that they've even adapted to this new-fangled Internet thing.
But Fleming's article, titled "Page Turner," is probably the best thing I've read so far about the whole Kindle/iPad/electronic reader vs. printed books debate. It covers it from multiple angles: that of an inveterate book reader and lover, a writer, and a published author. If you find yourself in a Barnes and Noble or Borders that carries LA Magazine, do yourself a favor and sit down and read the whole article (screw their revenue stream...this kind of wisdom should be posted online).
Fleming runs through her reasons for becoming a writer. She mentions the joy of getting that first book with your name on it, how permanent it feels, how the weight of it means much more than a simple number of pounds on a scale. "When I finally joined the author ranks and the copy of my first book arrived in the mail, I was dazzled, pawing it and sniffing it as an animal might take the measure of a its newborn. I savored the thickness of the paper, the title page, the type font. It felt so tangible, so permanent, my own creative stab at immortality."
She recounts how she used her husband's Kindle at the last minute for a book she needed to research a project and how it was there, suddenly, instantly, silently. "I was horrified by my gratitude because I knew what it meant: I was done for; I had crossed the divide. In that moment I had betrayed my values, my library, every bookstore I had ever loved. I was a Kindle slut with a taste for more."
Fleming also talks about what this means for writers. Lower book prices means less revenue. More writers. ("Now anyone can self-publish, and the idea of what it means to be a professional writer is changing.") But there's a payback. She fully admits that reading a book on a screen instead of in its printed form isn't the same deal, an idea Stephen King fully endorses in his latest column in the April 2nd issue of Entertainment Weekly. Fleming writes about the books she loves: "...their presence reminds me of the biggest pleasure of my life, what makes the days bearable—the act of reading—and concomitantly, the act of writing. Somehow seeing words on that screen has yet to kick my heart in a similar manner."
I wonder myself, as I sit in a room overloaded with books (10 separate bookshelves, each packed) how I will feel when the iPad arrives and I download my first book. Can I justify the cost--no matter how much less expensive than a "real" book--without having something really tangible to hold and feel and look at on a shelf? Does the added benefit of not owning so much STUFF pay off? And in the end, isn't it the words of a writer, a person who affects you, moves you, maybe even changes you, with the beauty, soul, and intelligence of what they've written, the most important thing and not HOW we read them?
Is it the driver or the car he or she arrives in?
Fleming is torn, too: "Oh, my library, my sweet library. Can you forgive me my treachery, my duplicity, my forsaking you for something hipper and sleeker? I wince when I pass you, feeling contrite and cheap and quite surprised at the suddenness with which a suitor stole, if not my heart—not that—at least my attention."
(Apologies to Ms. Fleming for lifting so much of her wonderful article for my own purposes.)
As per my usual computer confusion, I poted my ipad comment on yesterday's blog about "24".
Sorry, I didn't check in yesterday and was reading them both today.
Onward...
Posted by: Melanie Preschutti | March 30, 2010 at 12:15 PM