Avi

word craft

blog

Please Turn Off Your Book

I had just been to a con­fer­ence in Cal­gary, Cana­da, a con­fer­ence set up by and for librar­i­ans. I met authors and illus­tra­tors I’d not known before. Great talk (in Eng­lish and French) about books, writ­ing, and most of all read­ing. I had a ter­rif­ic time. But as I was fly­ing home, and just about to land, I heard a flight atten­dant say to the per­son seat­ed behind me, “Please turn off your book.” 

I was star­tled, though I had no rea­son to be. If there is any jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for hav­ing an e‑book read­er, it’s on air­planes with their ghast­ly cramped seats. Haul­ing around a Har­ry Pot­ter vol­ume, or War and Peace jus­ti­fies a light, slim e‑reader. Indeed, I had one with me and was using it for just that reason. 

But after being at a con­fer­ence and see­ing the beau­ti­ful pic­ture books by Marie-Louise Gay, and enjoy­ing the work of Richard Scrimger, I felt bad for young peo­ple who might only have e‑books. It’s use­ful to recall that after Guten­berg brought the print­ing press to Europe, print­ed books were called “imi­ta­tion books,” because they were not hand-craft­ed. So it goes: Stone, clay, papyrus, wax tablets, scrolls, codex, and the print­ed book. Over time texts have changed their form.

Still, the e‑book is (for me) only about the ease of read­ing in odd places. The e (elec­tric­i­ty) lies not the deliv­ery sys­tem, but in the writing. 

2 thoughts on “Please Turn Off Your Book”

  1. I think the best way to view e‑books and e‑readers is that it’s an expan­sion of access for pub­lish­ing. Pub­lish an e‑book now and you have the poten­tial of a glob­al reach almost instan­ta­neous­ly. There will always be “best media” for par­tic­u­lar kinds of books and cer­tain­ly the rel­a­tive­ly small size of many e‑readers can dimin­ish the impact of the art in pic­ture books. That being said, we’ll have to wait and see what new tech­nolo­gies are wait­ing to change the book experience.

    Reply
    • It’s true, most ebooks don’t include qual­i­ty art, and in some books they have some pret­ty gross look­ing pix­el­ly illus­tra­tions. How­ev­er it’s bet­ter than noth­ing. I don’t read for the pic­tures, but for the sto­ry, so it does­n’t impact me to much.

      Reply

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.