Read it and weep

Recently, a friend and I were discussing our love of books. This is not to say that we enjoy reading, which we do, but that we absolutely love the qualities of books as objects. Everything about a book is absolutely wonderful: the spine, the smell, the weight, the binding and the sheets of paper with a multitude of variation in type face. To hold a book in your hands and turn the pages is one of the most soothing sensations in the world. I remember when digital books first became available; people were able to download novels and news papers onto their palm pilots. For a little while people were saying that because of this, books would become out-moded, that they would eventually be replace by this new digitized form. That really upset me. I tried to imagine a world without book shops or even the massive conglomerates, or a room with a shelf of neatly lines data pads. What kind of a future was that? One without dust or paper cuts, I suppose. Fortunately that didn’t happen. I think those few who actually purchased the program to download a copy of Huckleberry Finn or whatever other of the few books available in 1999, realized a) that the font of their palm pilots was too small, b) they looked like a crazy person staring at an electronic devise on which they weren’t playing a video game, and c) it just wasn’t as satisfying as physically turning a page, dog-earing it or lovingly placing a book mark (which I collect) on the page you know you’ll come back to. Books are sacred, precious, and I hope that never changes.