Go Electric

Is the book of the future going to be a glowing screen? Download from a literary iPod website, and off you go, thumb on the dial as you scroll through the LED text. And will these electronic devices have magnifying screens for the presbyopic? Lots of older people are readers, you see, and the old eyes, well, there's a strong market for large print books these days.

There are those who compare a book to a song, downloadable and portable. When I think of tunes, I picture the playlist, a song from one artist here, followed by a piece from someone else. Now, if I were to treat books the same way, I could read a paragraph of Hemingway, and then peruse a page or two of Welty, and maybe follow up with a little poetry from Michael Hartnett (in English, please. I don't understand more than a cupla focal and I'll never get through a whole stanza).

Books aren't pop songs. The structure of a novel is not an album, just as a chapter from a novel is not a tune in its entirety. Fiction has a pacing and composition that is different from a collection of songs which may or may not be linked with a common theme. A research text, on the other hand, can be culled for key points. One does not have to read the entire Grey's Anatomy to learn about the mesenteric vein and its branches. As Ann Fadiman mentioned recently in the New York Times, that's not reading, and that's fine for research documents.

The biggest problem with e-book readers is sand. Can you imagine the inner works of the thing, grit blowing in while you lie in the sun on a summer day, reading some trashy novel? With paper, you turn it upside down, give it a good shake, and no harm's done to the book. Can't say the same for the poor iPod. Drop that at the beach and you're out a few hundred dollars, with the sand scouring the delicate chips to electronic death.

There's nothing like a book, a physical entity that does not need to be replaced every few years due to upgrades. It does not need batteries, it will never blink out and die just when you get to the good part, and it comes in a print big enough to see without dragging out the bifocals.