A young beautiful girl sits in a coffee shop, enjoying her evening by reading intensely from her tablet. She sits contently, taking sips in between lines of her latest pleasure-reading novel, "High Fidelity."
In that same coffee shop, on that very same evening, a young man enters. He is struck by the delicate chime of the beautiful woman’s breathless laugh as she keeps her eyes glued on her tablet. He writes off her amusement as being a result of a possible Facebook notification or popular meme. The man desperately wants to speak to this lovely girl. He is yearning to find out the name of the beautiful woman that he was fortunate enough to stumble upon. After a few minutes of pondering what he could say to her to grab her attention in a genuine and compelling way, he decides his course of action. Does he ask her what she’s drinking? No, that’d be ludicrous; this is a coffee shop after all, not a bar. Does he inquire about her horoscope sign? No, he does not hate himself enough to use a pathetically fake ice breaker like that... so he leaves. Her table, only accompanied by her tablet and cup of coffee, left the man with little material to help form a credible or quirky reason to approach the girl.
Had the girl been reading a printed copy of "High Fidelity", she would have been pleased to discover that her soulmate was in the same coffee shop as her, at the same time as her. The young man would have been able to comment on how he too loves the novel after noticing the book’s title and distinct cover in her delicate hands. She would have remarked that the novel is a favorite of her’s, and is much better than the film. He would agree. He’d explain his opinion is so because of his intense hatred towards John Cusack’s bowl cut hair style in the movie and Jack Black’s abominable acting abilities. The girl would laugh breathlessly at this. The man would sit at her table with his coffee, feeling his heart swell with adoration each time she laughs. They would sit, exchanging smiles and banter until the closing hour of the coffee shop crept upon them. They would fall in love sweetly and suddenly that evening. But alas, fate falls short and the two fail to interact all because the beautiful woman had decided to give into the pressures of our capitalistic society by reading from a tablet instead of printed books. Few realize that missed connections with literary soulmates is one of the risks that is taken when a person decides to store their book libraries on a tablet.
I steer clear of tablets as to not ruin the off chance that my soul mate might be waiting for the opportunity to remark on what I’m reading when we do finally serendipitously meet in a charming public place. In addition to this very real fear, it is my personal belief that Kindles would ruin my whole reading experience. Say I want to be a little masochistic and read the final page of a book before even starting it...do you even know how long it would take me to swipe to the end?! With the paper edition of books, all I have to do is open the back cover, and voilà! Now I am able to read while accompanied by an overwhelming amount of suspense, wondering how the characters will meet their fate that is revealed on the book’s last page. I am aware it is vastly uncool to not lug around a tablet that shows off how “with” technology I am. The world will have to continue spinning, despite knowing that there are no tablet-taken mirror selfies of myself in existence. Who notices a quality outfit when an electronic device the size of a textbook is taking up half the camera’s frame? The rock I live under is a comfortable one.
The realm of reading and the realm of reality are two worlds I like to keep separate from one another. When I am traveling through time with Billy Pilgrim and the Tralfamadorians, I do not want a notification bar running across the top of the screen of my "Slaughterhouse Five" e-book with a notification from Facebook regarding the status update of a former high school friend or distant relative! I like keeping my two worlds of fiction and reality separate. When I need an escape from reality, books are what turn to take me away. When the dreamer in me gets too ahead of herself, reality returns to ground me and help sharpen my focus on the more tangible world. Books are the mistress I indulge in. Reality is my under-appreciated significant other; it is my preference that I am able to maintain intimate relationships with both, preferring that they never, ever meet. Books and the stories they hold suspend time, stopping the outside world-- if only for a little while. Tablets thrust the latest news of the world at war, the political world, the celebrity world, and the social media world all into one expensive rectangle, unnaturally composed of different metals and artificial intelligence. The omniscient Kindle’s notifications is an overwhelming and rapid reminder that it’s impossible to avoid returning to the real world. I prefer life under my tablet-free rock.
The organicness of a printed book is possibly what I love most about them over Kindles. Never has a book been disrupted for me on account of low battery or exceedingly hot temperatures; pages are supported by ink, not electricity. I will never have to endure the hot metal of a tablet on my skin while trying to read an e-book at the beach. Nor will I ever have worry about losing my whole literary library due to the shattering of an electronic bulking rectangle. All my books are safe under my rock.
Truthfully, there’s too much to enjoy about books to ever cheat on them with a kindle, iPad or tablet. I enjoy book’s covers and their blurbs that never quite capture the spirit of the work in the few provided paragraphs. I find amusement in my annotations from younger versions of myself trying to make meaning of the complex works of J.D Salinger. My written notes mark my books as my own; each word a verbal symbol of possession as to say “I was here! These are my ideas in my book!”. The pure, non annotatable sliding pages of e-books make my copy of "Catcher in the Rye" no different than the next person’s e-book copy. The kindle strips me of leaving my mark on novel’s that have left an irrevocable mark on me.
Books age with me, like life long friends. I become familiar with their smells, lamenting the yellow pages that were once a pure white when the novel was purchased several years ago. I outgrow many of them, like some real friends left behind but always kept in memory. I grow nostalgic for books that watched me grow, from "The Monster at the End of this Book Staring Furry, Lovable Grover" to the "Harry Potter" Series to "Looking For Alaska" to "Slaughterhouse Five." Books sheltered me and kept me company in my room when making friends was painfully hard. They helped me escape to a world that made sense, subtly hidden under desks tops in math class where algebraic concepts made no sense. Books have caught my embarrassingly uncontrollable sobs when a character dies and have given my anxious hands something to hold on to when everything in the book’s plot started to fall apart. Various novels in my library have seen more emotion from me than most humans in my life ever will. The understanding of human nature in books and the lessons pulled from human errors in novels guides me when everyone else seems just as lost as me.
In the future, when hipsters eventually and inevitably decide to romanticize the “vintage” nature of printed novels, my printed library will be something for all to marvel at. Until then, if you’d like to borrow a book, I’ll be under my rock--cozy with a paper-paged novel in hand.
