*Sigh.*
All these years I was worried that one of my favorite authors, Diane Duane, was ill. Or maybe even dead. Because I hadn't seen a new book by her on the shelves in ages.
But she was just fine (sigh again, this time with relief). She wasn't even on sabbatical. She was still writing books...but not for physical publication. E-books, to be exact. Apparently, there's a rather large stack of digital stories that take place between the events of various novels in her Young Wizards series. (Note: this lady was writing cool stories about wizards loooong before Harry Potter was ever created, and Nita Callahan and Kit Rodriguez are well worth your time. First book is So You Want to Be A Wizard. Check it out! Now, back to the original post...)
Now, I really don't have a quarrel with Kindle, and the fact that I am blogging right now proves my status as a non-Luddite. But I am rather old-fashioned in that I love books. I love ordering from my local indie book store, or from Abebooks or Amazon or wherever (I do prefer the actual book store if they can get what I want), and I love opening that new book and turning the pages and devouring every word, and I love shelving that new book in its proper order when I'm finished. A good enough book will catch my eye later on, and then I get the pleasure of re-reading it!
A physical cardboard-and-paper book is very low-tech. All you need in order to read it is enough light. If it's night and the electricity goes out, you can light a candle and carry on. Or just put the book down and go to bed--the sun will rise and give you enough light again! And a blind person doesn't even need light--just a Braille book and sensitive fingers!
Kindle is great in that you can carry lots of books in the same space you'd carry a thin paperback. But it's a machine. You have to be careful not to drop it or get it wet, and if the battery dies, all the light in the world won't get you to that next chapter of The Pride of Chanur, or The Arabian Nights, or even Oliver Twist. And if there's a nasty power surge while you're recharging and the hard drive goes kaput, so does your compact little library...unless you backed it all up on yet another machine. Honestly, a real book is so little trouble by comparison. At least, I think so.
So I will never get a Kindle. Which, unfortunately, means I will also never get to read all those in-between stories about the Young Wizards (some of whom are cats--there's an entire e-novel about them that I just found out about). If I sound like I'm whining, well--maybe I am. But too much screen time isn't very good for people's eyes, filters or no filters. Science has shown that reading a real book before retiring is better for your sleep cycle than staring at a phone, TV, computer...or Kindle. And I'm one of those people who actually can't get to sleep without reading a couple of short stories or a chapter from a novel.
Long ago, when Stephen King wrote The Green Mile as an e-book serial, he subsequently had each chapter published in physical form, then expanded and combined the chapters into an actual novel. He understood that he had fans who might not be computer-literate, or who might--like me--prefer printed words on paper. Diane doesn't seem to know that she has fans who still read physical books; she may think all her readers are wealthy kids who get the newest e-reader every Christmas. But if so, she's sadly mistaken.
Or maybe she's saving trees. It does take wood pulp to create paper. But there are sustainable forest initiatives, and paper is recyclable...and a physical book can be regifted to a friend, donated to a library, sold to a secondhand store, or traded in at the nearest Little Free Library!
But at least Diane seems unaware that she's snubbing people. Other writers, like Charles Stross, revel in techno-snobbery; if the stupid yahoos won't embrace the Technology Revolution, why, they deserve to miss out on the latest installment of that hero who started out on paper but has since uploaded to the Internet, where he and his in-the-know fans can live happily ever after, far away from the Great Unwashed who still write with ink pens.
But technology, besides being fragile, is shallow. And no society lasts forever. And when they finally get around to digging up the remnants of the USA, what will they find that will actually tell them anything about us? Laptops? Xboxes? Kindles?
Or...maybe...books?
That's where I'm laying my bets. Too bad I won't be around to collect my winnings.
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