The Touch, The Feel...The Smell

Today I read what I consider to be very depressing news: eBooks are out selling paperbacks! I know many of you are thinking, "welcome to the new millennium." But I just can't get behind this; I can't do it.

Maybe I don't like change. I admit that it took a lot for me to join the iPod generation (looking back it took a lot for me to trade in my cassette tapes, too). Once I started purchasing CD's, I saw no end in sight. I loved the way they sound (albeit not as good as vinyl; but what is?). Despite all the downloading software and even the creation of iTunes, I still preferred to burn a CD at the end of the day. I saw no problem with this until I had (WAY) too many CD's to appropriately switch around while driving. That's it: I got an iPod because I'm pragmatic. End of story.

I see no pragmatism for getting eBooks rather than a hardcover or paperback book. I know books take up a lot of room, and they aren't exactly environmentally friendly. But I remember being a little girl watching Beauty and the Beast in the theater, and I was immediately giddy and jealous of the library the Beast showed Belle (that scene is probably why it's my favorite Disney movie). Still to this day I dream of having a room in my house filled from floor to ceiling with books.

The library the Beast gave to Belle. Isn't it beautiful?

eBooks are also killing bookstores, which plunges me into an even deeper despair. I can and have gotten lost in a book store for hours. Even if there is no book that I want, I will dilly dally around the store. I love the feel of running my hands over the book spines. I swear you can hear the words humming through them. It's almost romantic. I love the fact that my multiple copies of Our Town have white lines all through the spines; I feel like those lines tell their own story.

I anticipate the touch of turning a page. The slight crisp crack that each page makes as it falls to the next. The creak that a brand new book makes when you first open it and enter the world the author has laid out for you. Old books exude a smell that cannot be captured by anything else. Years ago, after reading A Tale of Two Cities, my parents bought me an entire collection of Charles Dickens books published in 1881. They are a prized possession. I lately haven't read any of them, but I do occasionally pick them up just to breathe in the musty, intoxicating smell of history and genius.

Maybe this post is my love letter to a dying breed. Maybe I'm a hopeless romantic who looks forward to entering a bookstore to see a long anticipated friend on a given Tuesday (I'm coming on June 7th Hit List). Or maybe I'm just stubborn; and you'll have to pull a 1st Edition Hamilton, Rice or Dickens out of my cold dead hands and replace it with this thing you call a Kindle, Nook, or whatever if you want me to convert.