Kindle Didn’t Start a Fire

I keep hearing that one of the top gifts for the holidays this year will be an e-reader.  Below, is an essay I wrote about receiving the Kindle two years ago for Christmas.  It originally appeared in the literary magazine SLAB (Sound and Literary Art Book) last spring.  Since I wrote the essay, my husband, my teenage son and my tweener daughter all tried reading from the Kindle and they all returned it to my drawer.  It just isn’t for us. 

That being said, I have had enough experiences in the last year (i.e. accompanying my daughter to an American Idol concert) where I thought ‘if I had an iPhone, I would be reading a book on it right now.’  The moment Verizon and Apple reach a deal (please, please soon), I’ll be buying an iPhone and guess what my first app will be?

My thoughts on the Kindle

Years ago, for Christmas, my husband gave me a stack of books he chose with a book store clerk after describing me to her.  I haven’t read them all, but every time I see one on the bookshelf, I feel loved.  For my birthday, a girlfriend gave me a book I wanted but hadn’t told her about, and I felt known. (FYI, this is Claire.)  For my 40^th birthday I asked all of my friends to give me a book that was meaningful to them, as a way to learn about them.  Last Christmas, as my kids ran out to see what Santa delivered, my daughter called over her shoulder, “you have a stack of books Mommy!”  But Santa had brought those books for my mother, and when I realized that, I was disappointed.  Instead of books my husband bought me the Kindle, reasoning there was no reason to buy me any real books when I could download them. 

At that moment, I didn’t feel known. 

A month before Christmas, our copy of Newsweekarrived with Jeff Bezos on the cover announcing the Kindle, a small computer book reader.  As I looked at that cover I felt uneasy, and that night my husband read the article and handed it to me as he rolled over to sleep.  “You have to read this,” he said, “you’ll love it.”  I looked at the magazine curled up in the valley of the comforter between our two bodies and felt a rush of anxiety.  I silently picked it up between my forefinger and my thumb, lifting it as if it were vile, lowered it onto my nightstand, and returned to reading my book, made of paper. 

Every day I looked at the nightstand where the magazine lay open to the Kindle article and left it there, I couldn’t touch it.  For me books are not merely inanimate objects.  I love the physicality of books, knowing their length by their heft, the visual of their covers and simply holding them is part of the joy of reading for me.  I stared at the magazine article, questions roiling.  Was I archaic because I didn’t want to give up that physical relationship with books I’ve always had?  In ten years would my living room with all its bookshelves be reminiscent of a bygone era?  These book-filled shelves reflect me, but would that reflection become a picture of someone outdated, someone who refused to give up the horse and buggy when the car came along only because I loved my horse?  Awhile back my grandparents decided they were too old for computers and they ended their lives never understanding technology, unwilling even to give it a try.  Was my reaction to the Kindle the same kind of thing?  Was I too old at only 45 for the current culture?

I tried comforting myself with the thought that maybe the Kindle might not catch on, but I think I’m wrong about that.   While a recent Zogby poll showed that 82% of readers prefer books to reading technology, I’ve seen enough people watching movies on tiny iPods screens to believe the Kindle is here to stay.  I remember when CDs arrived in the 1980s and an older friend declared they would never replace albums.  I wonder if he’s found an antique dealer to offload his stacks of LPs.

The Kindle is the size of a thin hardback book, the computer screen approximately the size of book page, rimmed in plain white, a button along the right side to change pages and buttons on the left to turn a page forward or backward.  A few control buttons run unobtrusively along the bottom.  The Kindle is well designed; it does resemble a book. 

Jeff Bezos describes the Kindle as conceived to “out-book-the-book.”  The experience is meant to mimic reading a book, but better.  It has great features, the equivalent of an eight-pound dictionary accessible by clicking a word, so the necessity of attempting to decipher meaning from context will soon be obsolete.  Readers can write margin notes that are saved on a server and easily accessed.  The biggest plus is books can be downloaded within minutes from anywhere.  I had to admit that not having to haul several books along when I travel had its appeal.

So I decided I would try to be open minded.  A testament to this commitment is that I actually read the instructions.  I operate under the rule that if I can’t figure out how to work something by looking at it, then I’ll remain ignorant.  But this time, I studied the entire introductory program and even experimented with looking up words in a text, marking text and downloading a book. The process was simple.

The first attraction was a subscription to The New York Times.  On the Kindle this subscription is cheaper, less than half the cost of a regular subscription, far better for the environment, and my Kindle could receive the paper wherever I am, even when I’m away from home.  I am usually the only person in my family who reads The Times, so not being able to divide the paper among the family isn’t a problem.

After the second day, I hated it.   For one more week, I carried the Kindle around; it was light, fit in my purse and I could pull it out and read it without smearing black ink all over my fingers.  Still, without even discussing the crossword puzzle problems, it didn’t work for me–the graphics were difficult to understand; I’m uncomfortable reading an article if I can’t tell how long it is by looking at it; and, I couldn’t wander through the surrounding articles to see what I might want to read next.  I cancelled the subscription.

It took five attempts to order a book I wanted that Amazon offered as a Kindle option.  Bezos’s vision is that someday every book ever printed in any language will be available via the Kindle, but now only about 145,000 are accessible.  I started to read The Nineby Jeffery Toobin.  This was better than reading the newspaper, but the experience felt superficial.  I think differently when I hold a book–more slowly, more deeply.  I am contemplative with a book in my hands, that’s part of what I love about reading.  Looking at a screen leads me towards snappy and quick thoughts easily conjured and quickly lost which describes how I already spend most of my hectic days.  I made my way through the first two chapters and put it down.  Toobin deserved better from me.

I considered trying a fun beach read novel to match the level of thinking the screen arouses, but when I read those books, I want to be relaxing in the bathtub or sunbathing pool or beach side, and none of those environments are conducive to computer screens.  Interacting with technology and water just conjures up electrocution, not relaxing.  Plus, with beach reads, I like to jump ahead 50 pages and read a few paragraphs, then 100 pages and read a few more before jumping back to where I was; that it helps me stop the headlong rush to the end.  With a Kindle I had to electronically mark where I was before jumping around, and beach reads aren’t for electronically marking, they’re for squashing and squishing.

So I gave up.  Maybe I’m the crotchety old woman who clogs the road with her horse and buggy because she won’t drive a car, and maybe my home will be antiquated in the near future.  This may be the start of a mid-life crisis, and maybe instead of buying a red sports car, I’ll buy a bookstore.  For the first time I’m worried that the speed of change will pass me by.  I could go to therapy, but instead I think I’ll just get lost in a good book, one whose pages I can feel between my fingers.