(November 20, 2013 at 2:40 pm)thesummerqueen Wrote: So, I love my kindle. I also love bookstores. And I skimmed through this thread and noticed most people were talking about literature - fiction and poetry and the like. What about non-fiction?
The thing about books is...not all of them are great to have on a digital device. Artbooks of collected works from your favorite artists, gardening books, reference tomes, textbooks, cookbooks, etc - these suck on the small screens of a phone or tablet, and you can't feasibly haul your large monitor around everywhere.
Also, there are people like us who want the nice leather bound versions of books we love. I still carry around my Lord of the Rings trilogy - a heavy tome with a built in ribbon bookmark and Alan Lee's ethereal watercolor illustrations and the perfect silky sort of paper to flip through. Who would give up that tactile experience?
I have a book called "Aphrodite: a Memoir of the Senses," which traces the history of (alleged) aphrodisiacs throughout the world, with bawdy little pencil and water color illustrations in the corners and different fonts to celebrate the poems devoted to food and rapture - they wouldn't translate to Kindle very well. And there's a scent that rises up from the thick, slick pages, like old perfume from antique cloth, a faint odor of broth and spices. Opening that book and inhaling that fragrance while reading Isabelle Allende's sensuous prose...for just a moment, I am transfigured. Who would give that up completely?
Not any of the millions of bibliophiles still left.
So I think stores will stay around, but I think books will get more expensive. I'm sort of okay with that.
Oh, also, Deidre, there are two excellent book podcasts which sometimes discuss this 'problem': Books on the Nightstand and Book Riot.
Thank you for telling me about the podcasts, I should look them up. I wanted to reply about the non fiction choices and the kindle. I love non fiction, it's mainly all I ever read, and the kindle has nice selections, everything coming through amazon. The nice thing is, once you select a book, it will continuously provide you with new options ...''if you liked this book, you'll like that book...'' kind of thing. It's pretty cool. Pros and cons to books and kindles. lol
