(no subject)

[kippurbird]

Good quote I heard:

I was attending a class on antique books in a library. It was a free class and I'd come with my parents. My dad thought it was going to be like the Antique Road show and was going to hopefully have some books appraised. It was not.

Still, it was interesting.

At one point, one of the people asked what the teacher what he thought about the new Ebooks after all you can get hundreds of them down in one little reader thing and stuff. He picked up a book about Thomas Aquinus and said, "This book is over 600 years old. We can still feel it, read it and see the craftsmanship put into it just like someone could when it was first made. Where will your ebook be in 600 years?"

I like that. I've always liked the feel of a book in my hands. It gives it more weight and excitement to opening it up and wondering what I'll find inside. Like opening a package. Pointing and clicking seems so sterile and mechanical. The screens are so distant, you can't really run your finger across the page when you turn it. You can't hold it and give it to someone wrapped up for a present. Perhaps books are more expensive and things, but there's a certain warm feeling that I get looking at my overflowing bookshelf; the ability to go over to it and choose the book. Physically take it and then sit curled up on my bed to try and read it. Try because, of course, the cat will always try to put a stop to it.


----

Speaking of books. I picked up Eats, Shoots and Leaves from a used bookstore in Santa Barbara. (It has a coffee stain on the paper cover, which gives it personality, I think.) It's a book about punctuation and it's a FUN read! Actually it's a book about how people use punctuation and how it evolved over time. Which I'm finding to be utterly fascinating.

One thing that came out of this is that I've found a good format to mimic for my fantasy writing book. Not completely, of course, but good enough.

Comments

[kd7sov]

Huzzah for books!

I had a certain amount of confusion, possibly due to the rather odd YouTube music video I've got going in the background, before I figured out that by "fantasy writing book" you meant "book about writing fantasy". But once I figured it out I agree that it'd be a good format.

I want to get ahold of a copy of that book for my own. It's one thing to say "I've read it," but quite another to say "I've got it."

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

It is probably also my strange way of writing things sometimes.

It's a good book, surprisingly!

[syderia]

I loved Eats, Shoots and Leaves when I read it. It's really well-written and enjoyable.

[mistyeyedreamer.livejournal.com]

Books are great. It seems to me that they absorb memories the more you read them. For example, I first read Inkheart at my summer camp. Whenever I open it up, I'll find little grains of sand from when I read it on the beach, and it gives me this warm fuzzy feeling like nostalgia or something.

My cat loves to sit on my books. But he's so cute that I always feel bad about shoving him off of them. :(

[authoressarktos.livejournal.com]

I agree, books are just more enjoyable than e-books, IMO :)

[16lettersonly.livejournal.com]

I've never liked e-books. Physical books are codices. E-books are scrolls. No offense to the ancients, but I find codices to be infinitely superior to scrolls for ease of use. That, and staring at white on black on a screen for hours on end hurts my eyes.

[falconwhitaker.livejournal.com]

Eats, Shoots and Leaves is one of THE BEST books that I have ever read. It's awesome. Absolutely awesome. I LOVED IT SO DAMN MUCH. <3

And I believe that the doctor who diagnosed my Asperger's said that the lady who wrote that book is an aspie too! SEE WHAT GLORIOUS WE CREATE, EH? :D

[kevias.livejournal.com]

You know the printing press was lambasted in its day, too, and for many of the same reasons as e-Books. Sterile, mechanical, lacking in craftsmanship and personality.

And when he says "we", who does he mean? Did he let you touch it, hold it, read it? Does it sit on the library shelf along with the others? I suspect not. Six centuries from now, any surviving e-Books will be sitting in storage, cared for by a handful of custodians, unused but to be waved in front of the younger generation as a token of some bygone age.

The eBooks, like printing presses, make books cheap and disposable, easy for commoners like us to acquire. Very few people could get their hands on the works of Thomas Acquinas six hundred years ago, as all books were not printed but written then, but now anyone can.

I personally do like holding and reading a physical book. The current generation of eBooks are a clumsy alternative.