Kindle Angst

So far, I've resisted the digital reading phenomenon. When the Kindle first came out, I was... maybe "horrified" is an overstatement, but I was pretty unsettled. The sensory experience of reading was so precious- how could anyone trade that in for a little gray screen? Who would want to curl up in front of the fire with an electronic device? Would I live to see the death of libraries??

Lately, though, I've started to come around to the idea that digital reading might not be so bad- at least in certain circumstances. On her blog The Unquiet Librarian, Buffy Hamilton addresses this in a post entitled "Sometimes I Need to Read the Print Version: When the eBook Doesn't Evoke the Same Reading Experience." In this post, she reflects on her own experience with both digital and traditional reading, pointing out that she prefers one or the other depending on the type of reading she's doing. For example, she likes reading "fluffy" or "light" material on an e-reader. "Not only do I seem to concentrate better on these types of texts in digital format," she writes, "but I also seem to read more quickly." She goes on to say that with nonfiction, she switches back and forth between printed and digital texts. She prefers print, though, when it comes to re-reading her favorite novels - she explains that this is probably because of "the sensory experiences... associated with previous readings."

As strange as it sounds, it had never occurred to me that someone might choose to read digital text for one genre and print for another. I had always seen this as a black-and-white issue - either you were on board with electronic reading or you weren't, and I had decided I wasn't. I was going to be the defender of bound volumes of paper with words on them, and I wasn't going to give in to this electronic silliness. But if enough of us feel the way Ms. Hamilton does, maybe there isn't a need to "defend" printed books against the likes of the Kindle. Maybe there is, and will continue to be, room for both. A while back, my brother's fiancée (an avid reader and soon-to-be elementary school teacher) explained to me how she had finally given in and bought a Kindle, in spite of initial reservations. "You really do get lost in it," I remember her saying, "just like in a real book." And I guess that's what matters- the experience that happens in your head, not in your hands.

It will be interesting to see how my future students feel about digital vs. printed texts. Over the past few weeks, I've gotten myself totally acclimated to doing my school readings digitally- I love being able to highlight and annotate using my keyboard, and I find that I'm much more efficient that way. I imagine that's the kind of reading many of my future students will grow up with. But I hope there will always be a place for the tangible kind of book, too.