While I do not fear contradiction, I am nagged by a feeling of guilt for being too quick to judge. I think I am still right about everything I said about books in this post a few months ago, but in a sense I've also betrayed the books. I feel unfaithful for abandoning my profoundly sentimental reasons.
I gave in to ebooks for practical reasons. While I had to dish out six grand for an ebook reader and another grand or two for the smart sleep cover, it was easy to redeem the value of the investment. Even if I've been selective, I have gathered enough reading material to last me a few years. I've acquired an decent line-up of ePub versions. To name a few: Hauruki Murakami, Salman Rushdie, Italo Calivno, Umberto Eco, Banana Yoshimoto, Tom Wolfe, as well as more recent ones I haven't read from Jonathan Franzen, Nicole Krauss, Junot Diaz, Gary Shtyengart, David Foster Wallace and even a short story collection edited by Jeffrey Eugenides that included one from Alice Murno. I also got some current magazine issues and for the first time in my life, I wasn't just reading New Yorker back issues that I pick-up from second-hand bookshops.
Perhaps it's an infatuation, but I did read a lot quicker and more often. The convenience of technology allowed me some advantages. With a built-in comfort light that's not too glaring, I can read in bed and still lay beside my D. and little I. I've spent a lot of time at airports the past few weeks and with a device that can carry thousands of books, it allowed me to switch back forth a few that I've stored. I've made an attempt to read "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace. If that gets too heavy, I couple it with a chaser or two of non-fiction from David Sedaris (Exploring Diabetes with Owls) or Jonathan Franzen (Farther Away) which I honestly end up reading more.
A perfect handle, adjustable font sizes/margins, a variety of font selections, long battery life, a web browser, a dictionary, highlights and annotations in a touch are also built-in conveniences. There's barely anything poetic about technology but I feel fascinated with what goes on whenever light falls on the surface of the ebook reader. From halogens of coffeeshops, the CFCs of our bedsides lamps, and especially sunlight, the pearl-ink screen gives off a magical glow. There is a perfect scientific explanation with what's going on behind that gray-scale screen. But each swipe of a finger still feels like alchemy: the wave of a magic wand, a foretelling of the future or an accumulation of an imagined experience. This must have been how enthralled people were after the invention of the Gutenburg press and when books started getting published.
It's a different medium of consuming content, an enabler to feed your imagination as a novel or mere words, come to life. It wasn't as soulless as I thought it would be, given that it was just a perfunctory 6-inch, colorless tab.
Perhaps all my self-contradiction and incongruity is really just being romantic. The old man is now sitting in his lazy boy, all the while dreaming about his old chair.
No technology, no chemical could ever replace the smells.
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