If you haven’t seen it yet, The Reader is a stunning adaptation of Bernhard Schlink’s novel. It tells the story of Michael Berg, a young German boy (David Kross) who meets Hanna Schmitz, a woman twice his age (Kate Winslett), with whom he begins an affair during the summer of 1958.
As their month-long romance develops, Michael discovers that Hanna loves being read to. Hanna is spellbound as Michael reads to her from, amongst other titles, The Odyssey, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and her favorite, The Lady with the Little Dog.
“Read to me first, kid. Then we make love,” Hanna tells her young lover as she sets the rules for the relationship. To meet her demands, Michael reads to her in bed, in the bathtub, and around the rest of Hanna’s tiny apartment. Kross is seen opening the books, turning their pages and even acting out scenes from the novels. Winslett, who won a Best Actress Oscar for the role, hangs on to each and every word that Michael reads off of the pages.
After seeing the seductive portrayal of books in The Reader, I couldn’t help but to think of Kindle, Amazon’s unromantic wireless reading device.
Imagine if the books in The Reader were replaced by a Kindle. Would Michael use it in the tub? It’s not waterproof, so there’s a high probability of damaging it. Would Hanna throw it to the floor in a rage of passion, right before another lovemaking encounter? Highly unlikely! The breakable Kindle, as we all know, comes at a hefty retail price. Hanna wouldn’t ask Michael where he got a particular book; the answer would always be Amazon.com.
When Hanna is serving her life term in a German prison, she checks out The Lady with the Little Dog from the prison. Although it is uncertain if, and when, libraries (including those in prison) will have Kindles, it’s currently impossible to download free ebooks from the New York Public Library to the Kindle.
Some readers prefer to start a new book with a pen in hand. Sorry Hanna-you cannot write in the Kindle! If you love to jot down notes along the margins or underline key sections of the text, this gadget isn’t for you.
The Kindle alters the reading experience for a single user and also has implications for the reading community. It is another electronic toy and most people are not willing to lend it out. You might let your friends borrow a book for a long airplane ride, but is anybody willing to part with a $359 device?
Needless to say, I will not be getting a Kindle since I’m a fan of hardcovers and paperbacks. I enjoy reading as an experience. I love the smell of used books and how the pages feel between my fingers, features which are unavailable on the Kindle. I often use concert ticket stubs as bookmarks. On rainy days, I enjoy sitting on my sofa and admiring my bookshelves, which are alphabetized and organized according to genre and region.
Whether I’m at home or on the road, bookshops are always a part of the itinerary. Some of my favorites include the Strand in New York City, Powell’s Books in Portland, Beckham Books in New Orleans and Foyles in London. I’m also guilty of overpaying for titles from the United Kingdom’s The Man Booker Prize list before they’re released to the American public.
When I was in elementary school, my parents refused to buy a video game console and I spent many afternoons reading from The Babysitter’s Club and Sweet Valley High series. I have spent a large part of my life curled up with a good book. You can call me traditional but I can’t imagine changing how I read.
It was a bit disheartening to learn that Toni Morrison, one of my favorite American authors, is a fan of the Kindle. However, it won’t stop me from showing off my autographed copy of her novel, Love, to guests.
This begs the question: Will people ever say that they have an autographed Kindle book from a Nobel Prize winning author?
Tim said:
brilliant post. I echo your love of reading actual books – and you raised concerns with the Kindle that I had never considered (lending a book to someone!!).
ridiculously good photoshop job too ;)
Dina said:
I appreciate any effort to make sure I can have a “book” with me at all times – I recently downloaded the Classics app to my iPhone so, for example, on nights when I’m heading out on the subway with a characteristically tiny purse, I can still read something on the train. But it’s a painful compromise. I too see reading not as just an intake of words, sentences, a story, but as a multi-sensory experience. Books to me have always been something to feel and smell and hear as well. I came home from the bookstore yesterday and engaged in one of my favorite post-book-buying rituals: I stacked up all my new books in front of me….. and pet them.
I like the idea of the Kindle, but I’m not sure I could ever feel passionate about reading that way.
Tim said:
here’s another reason I think something is lost (or some might say gained) in the move towards digital books – when I commute to work, I make a decision to either pull out the laptop and enjoy hypermedia OR pull out the old trusty book. When I’m then reading out of a book, there’s then no temptation to jump around and quickly change focus like there is with hypermedia – what’s the weather? is there any breaking news? what’s kottke just posted? – I can dig in and read along one context. I fear that with the Kindle, the temptation would be strong to just stop ‘reading’ for a minute and check out the breaking news.
Joel Potischman said:
I’ve been saying similar things since Kindle 1.0 came out. You can’t lend it out, it can break (its primary use case is air travel!), and most importantly in my mind, you never see it physically sitting on your bookshelf reminding you to finish it, read it again, use some of its ideas or themes in conversation, tell someone else about it, etc.
The screens are phenomenal, I’ll admit, but the fact that every page of every book is identical would make it hard to pick up on the “non-verbal” cues that a real book gives me, i.e. the cover and jacket, and how feeling a huge stack of paper in my left hand and a sliver of paper in my right tells me that I’m almost at the end of the story.
It also introduces the reader problem. The Kindle will become obsolete. No paper book ever printed, barring fire, water, or puppies, has ever suffered the same fate. My VHS tapes, 35mm slides, LPs, and floppy disks are now essentially unusable because I no longer own the reader device for those formats. I see no reason to force books to require an additional device to read them.
It’s a phenomenal solution to *Amazon’s* problems – inventory management, shipping, returns, etc. – but it doesn’t address any of mine. Kindle 2.0 may be better than Kindle 1.0. But I’m still reaaaaallly happy with Book 9999999999.0.
Kamni Khan said:
Thanks to Tyler Gaw and his amazing Photoshop skills!
Jen Epting said:
I agree 1000% with all of these comments, especially with Joel’s point about knowing how close you are to the end of a book AND with Tim’s point about the ability to focus on something without the constant pull of The Internets.
I spent a few hours poking around a bookstore on Saturday- there were tons of people, just sitting around on the floor, flipping through coffee table books, window-shopping in the new hardcover section. Reading isn’t just an activity- it’s a culture. Unless Amazon and the Kindle are prepared to replace that rich and historic culture with something competitive enough to entice me away, I’m sticking with books. I don’t need them to make my life “easier” if their solution is removing the soul of the experience.
Michael said:
I ‘somewhat’ agree with what’s been said, but then again I don’t have a Kindle, “yet”. I love to read and the idea of having this reading tool to utilize is great. Think of all those books stored in one ‘container’. It’s a changing world, newspapers are closing, the Kindle is simply a new way to read the written word. Its time.