I have a kindle, I like gadgets, and I embrace progressive technology enabling books to be read in a progressive way. As technology improves, books as a medium will evolve. It was noted on Stephen Fry's Planet Word documentary that as handheld e-readers improve we will see books that incorporate video and extensive footnotes, clips of music and similar. There are already books rife with hyperlinks, and it isn't difficult to imagine the benefits of textbooks where the references in the bibliography lead to the actual articles or papers themselves. These improvements would make studying easier and reading more fun.
Already on the kindle it is possible to see sections of text underlined if they have been highlighted by a number of readers. I'm not sure how I feel about that, hopefully it's a feature that can be turned off; I'd like to come to my own conclusions, and how I read a section of text will definitely be affected if I am aware many people felt it noteworthy.
As much as I enjoy e-readers, for me, personally, they are currently missing something. However this is not informed by practicality or sense, rather it is a hipster coolwank pretention. Much like musos who prefer cds to mp3, and the older who prefer cassette to cd, and the older who prefer vinyl to cassette, and the yet older who prefer music boxes to vinyl, I prefer books. I think it's likely a preference which will take longer to shift culturally, for in comparison to these evolving music recording formats which evolved over a comparatively short period the book has existed in a largely unchanged format for a large number of years.
So, in what ways do books differ to e-readers? In every material dimension the variety of books make them artefacts I delight in, and while the all-in-one nature of e-readers is also something that pleases me, books of paper and ink stimulate so many more of my senses. I have a colossal gospel tome of the Lord of the Rings, with tiny print despite its giant size, a long bound bookmark fraying at the edge, bounteous illustrations taking up entire pages. It is a beautiful book. It frustrates me somewhat as its size excludes it from one of my favourite pastimes: reading in the bath, however it makes up for this by sitting unused for months, years, and then upon re-discovery it has amassed a layer of dust, allowing me to blow it off, imagining that this is an ancient text I have discovered in an ancient ruin or storehouse. On the other end of the scale I have books from the Penguin Popular Classics series, which were printed cheaply in order to make them more available. Old plays and novels have in this way been shrunk into tiny, thin volumes that suit my pastime magnificently. In this way old bastions of literature stand pamphlet sized, and are a far more valuable and rewarding than anything committed to a flyer. I'd be more likely to frequent a pizza place or an indian restaurant which posted The Picture of Dorian Gray around the neighbourhood instead of their own tacky lists of food.
As well as their dimensions, the texture of books are also wildly varied. The plastic smoothness of dustsheets, the childish joy of running your hands over raised title text, like finding a shiny Ole Solskjaer in a packet of stickers. The simple pleasure of running your finger down the edge of the body of pages, watching them flick quickly back, enjoying the whirr of the motion and the breeze created. Joy. There is no better way to up the anticipation of a new journey about to begin within the pages.
But of all our senses, the most strangely powerful is smell. The olfactory stimulus can drag us back in time like no other. Perhaps that's slightly exaggerating; a film watched in childhood rewatched much later can warp us as well, and an album or a song repeatedly listened to can warp us back to the time and place when we hear it years later. For example Ghostbusters 2 turns me into a child as I watch it, and Tenacious D's Tribute takes my back to my teenage bedroom, playing Championship Manager 01/02 on an old PC. But from my experience so many more books can achieve this effect.
And regardless of this effect, I fucking love the smell of a good book. Even the smell of a shit one. I was shocked when I smelt a Twilight book, as despite knowing that it was a collection of written parp, I was shocked to discover that it smelt like a real book. Such is the power of smell, it can positively augment a good book, and it can even cover the reek of a poor book and bestow upon it the credibility of paper, glue and ink.
I recently re-read the first R.A. Salvatore book, The Crystal Shard, and as well as being pleased at how well it stood the test of time and very much enjoying it, I was surprised by its smell. 'Oh yes' I thought, 'this is the smell of fantasy'. And I was surprised by how right I was. Perusing the limited stock I have at my disposal, I am right now smelling Weis & Hickman's Dragon Wing (raised golden title text - delicious) and though it is, of course, the smell of paper, ink and glue, it also smells of fantasy. Also at hand I have Raymond E. Feist's Magician, and it smells exactly the same way. Why should this be!? All these books are from different publishers, and yet they smell exactly the same way. It is as though a secret council of fantasy elders convened and decided "this is how we want fantasy to smell", and so it does.
Koushun Takami's Battle Royale has pages which are unusually white. It has a cold smell, slightly sanitise and lacking in personality. Like a hospital ward or a government building. The cover is a deep red, glossy with a dimpled title. It fits the story magnificently. I have a number of Haruki Murakami books, mostly through the Vintage label, and to me the smell of them is the ultimate smell of comfort. It is the nasal equivalent of putting on the comfiest of pyjamas and hibernating deep in bed. Final Fantasy VII is my gaming equivalent of this. Thanks to the portableness of books, and FF7s release on the PSP I can have this sensation whilst actually in comfy pyjamas and in bed, but I daren't risk it lest I slip into an eternal coma of comfort. Or die as it is also known.
The book which has most moved me nasally recently is Richard Dawkins' The Magic of Reality. Ostensibly a book for older children it is, frankly, utterly majestic. Each page is glossy and rich with colour, and smells of recent redecoration. If you like reading and sniffing paint, I would suggest firstly that you stop sniffing paint, but while you're going cold turkey you can work your way intellectually and olfactorily through this tome. With it's dustsheet off it is a pleasing pale yellow, and at the risk of looking like a lunatic I could very easily simply touch it for an entire hour and be pleased. I would argue that e-readers simply aren't a substitute for that.
E-readers are cool and functional, but they simply don't (yet) have the capacity for exciting me fully in the material world. My kindle doesn't smell of anything. Of course, being human beings we are problem solving animals and we, as we have always done, have thought our way around the problem. We have covers for these e-readers. I have three, for reasons which parallel the Goldilocks tale. One came with the device, a cheap black leather case, and was functional but a little loose and it did not please me. The second, which I bought, was a purple latex sheath which attracted dust like a bugger and was therefore unpleasant to the touch. My final purchase, which so far has pleased me, is a brown hemp cover which is delightful to the touch, and also to the nose.
I am sometimes moving with the times, but I hope that it will be awhile yet until the smell of fantasy is eradicated.
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