Will that be Paper or Digital, ma'am?

My Dad was, among many other things, a carpenter.  This worked out well, since my Mom, my sisters, and I were, and still are, voracious readers, constantly bringing home books and demanding "Shelves!  We need more shelves!"  In fact, I think an empty bookshelf serves almost as a challenge to read and fill the shelves as you would your own mind and then, filled to capacity, stands as a record to your accomplishment.  When my history professors would clean out their offices, I would adopt as many books as I found interesting, which is to say, most of them.  My favorite place to go when I have a night without my little boy is to the bookstore.  In fact, my favorite place to go with my little boy is the bookstore and the library.  (Although I dearly wish they didn't have toys in the kid's section at certain large bookstores.) 
I have books everywhere in my house.  Literally.  My "linen" cupboard upstairs has all the bed linens squished onto one shelf, and the remaining shelves are books, stacked two deep.  I have 5 bookshelves in my bedroom.  There are shelves of cookbooks downstairs, and books piled elsewhere beside chairs, on the stairs, waiting to go back on the shelf, hidden away waiting for Christmas morning.  My son has 2 bookshelves and 1 book-rack in his room for his own books, some of which were mine as a child.  There are also audiobooks, which my iPod is home to. 

So when I went to my significant other's house for the first time, I was flabbergasted, yes, FLABBERGASTED, by the lack of bookshelves.  How could this highly intelligent and charming, not to mention handsome, man not have books and bookshelves in every room? 

Easy, he tells me, as he holds up his e-reader.*

And so, the debate began.  "Real" books versus E-books. 

Here are some of the reasons I have been heard thus far, explaining the superiority of the e-reader:

• E-readers take up less space and you can tote around more books.
• E-readers are environmentally friendly, keeping you from cutting down trees to print more books.
• You don't need a lamp to use an E-reader.
• You can easily take notes and highlight passages in an E-reader and you can later access them very easily.  Furthermore, you can delete a note like it never existed.
• You can get a tablet style E-reader, which contains the internet and gives you the ability to get magazines and newspapers as well as books.
• Immediate accessibility in most cases.
• Cheaper prices on books.

These are all highly logical reasons why the E-reader is a good option, especially if you always carry a book or three around with you, which is what I do.  I currently have a copy of the Complete Lord of the Rings in my bag.  It's rather on the heavy side.
However, since when are human beings purely logical?  Even Mr. Spock, known for his stoic and logical nature, was half human, and as a result, occasionally cracked and showed emotion.  We attach feeling to everything.........the dog collar of your childhood dog, the t-shirt from your first marathon, the diary you kept in high school........and books.

Somehow, A Separate Peace, would just not be the same for me I if read it on an e-reader.  There's something about the well-worn pages, tattered cover, and all the notes in the margins that are as important to me as the story itself.  It's simply not something that can be streamlined.

When I asked my group of friends on Facebook how they felt about e-readers, I got a surprising answer.  I truly expected my tech-savvy friends to be excited about the e-reader, to be ready to extol its virtues to me.  Many did say how much they love their various e-readers, but of those people, there were still the moments of doubt, where they said it was weird to not know how many pages you had left to read.  There is a certain satisfaction at looking at a big fat book and watching as the bookmark moves further and further through the book.  But, I got a lot of people who simply stated "I'm still for books."  Someone I've known since childhood put it the most eloquently: 

"As techie as I am, I still like real books. I like having a library of them in my office to select from, I like the look of books on the shelf and the feel of them in my hands. I like partially turning a page as I'm getting to the end of a page letting the book know that I'm charging on in my reading. It's just not as tactile with the eReaders..."

Books aren't just vacant objects- something else to be scanned and compressed and digitized.  It's hard to put into words what it is that makes them different.  The above quote is as close as I will ever get to explaining it.  I can't necessarily argue with the logic I stated in the beginning of this blog.  There is a streamlined neatness to e-books that many find appealing.  But where is the emotional facet?  Pardon the airiness of the following comment, but books are warm, while technology is cold.  What happens when the two combine- does technology grow a heart or do books lose some of their personality?  

I realize that there are those who will see that idea as utter claptrap- a personality?  Warmth from an object?  But even as what I am writing elicits a response from you, so too do books.  These written words do not spring forth from a machine- they are thought out, written, rewritten, and shared between people.  They are more than just words. 

The reasons that I believe a lot of us hang onto our books and our book buying habits (or library going habits) can't be defined in a list of bullet points.  There's just something about them- about books.  They changed everything when they became widely available with the advent of movable type.  They changed lives and thinking then and they continue to do so every day.  There are books that you read and you are never the same after.  You finish the last page, wishing it didn't have to end, and sit back and think or say "Whoa."  and then soak it all in. 

That alone should allow the book to have its own place, its own space, in our lives and not just zipped up and turned off, as we do with so many other things.  

Smart Mama, Dumb Phone

With the upswing of social networking, e-mail, texting, and smartphones, it is possible to stay fully connected almost anywhere you go.  I don't know what the exact statistics are, but most people I know that have cell phones own a "Smart" phone, such as the Blackberry, Droid, iPhone, Android, etc, etc.  I had a Blackberry for a while, until its untimely demise and replaced it with a Droid.  I was plugged in.  Constantly.  If the phone dinged, pinged, or buzzed, I had to check it.  The little green flashing light, indicating some form of message, was like Odysseus' sirens, calling me insistently.

On top of this, it cost money.  At the time, it was $30/ month.  Not much until you start adding it all up.  Cost of the phone, cost of the data plan, and then there is the cost of the time taken away from your real life.  Those minutes when you aren't really paying attention to your family or your surroundings add up.  What seems like a few minutes will add up into hours and then days, depending on your usage habits.  This was pointed out to me in sharp relief when I spent a week at Cape Cod with my son, my sisters and their families.  While I was there, I made it a point to leave my phone behind 90% of the time.  If we went to town, I took it, but that was it.  I took pictures with my regular digital camera.  One of my sisters, who considers me a techno-geek of sorts, was constantly caught off-guard when she would ask me to look something up, call someone, etc and I would reply that my phone was back at the cottage.  The first time, her mouth dropped open and she was speechless. 

So, I went low-tech and used my "upgrade" to get a DumbPhone.  The fanciest thing about this particular phone is that it has a QWERTY keyboard to make texting a little bit easier and a small camera, which takes mediocre photos.  I must admit that the transition was odd.  I missed the nice camera and ability to e-mail photos the most of all the features.  The lack of having everyone's updates, tweets, and comments was almost a relief.  The only statuses I needed to worry about were mine and my son's. 

It surprised me that my friends had the most difficulty in my choice to "upgrade" to a low-tech status.  My nights are no longer disturbed with the dinging of my phone and I find messages waiting for me about how much I miss out on with my "non-internet phone." 

In reality, I am not missing out on all that much.  I am gaining time with my son, who is growing up WAY too fast.  I am out in the yard, helping to build a treehouse.  I am in the garage, fixing the chain on his bike again.  I am making dinner, while he sings the Christmas songs they have been learning at school.  (Voice like his mother- sounds like an angel when he sings.)

So, consider this, especially right now, during the busiest time of the year, which is supposed to be all about family, not phones.  Be present in the moment.  Enjoy the glow of the family around the table.  Technology has its place and it can be a useful tool to bring those together who are far apart, especially with military deployments. But when the phone dings or bings or buzzes, ask yourself which matters more at that moment- the e-mail/text message/ FB alert that just came in, or being in the moment.