A conscious un-digitaling

Faithful readers of our blog will be overjoyed, I’m sure, to hear that I was successful in my attempt to finally read a book that had been taking up valuable bookshelf real estate in my apartment for some 20 years. James Michener’s Creatures of the Kingdom is a compilation of excerpts from several of his works, including Hawaii, Alaska, Chesapeake, and Centennial. These tales are imaginings of the earth and animals, many of them set in prehistoric times. At the risk of this turning into a book review, I just want to note that, although I took issue with some of what he wrote, I was fascinated to step into vanished worlds in which ancient mountain ranges and islands are born and now-extinct animals hunt, breed, and die.

As this book was given to me a couple decades ago, it was of course in a non-digital format. Toting around this hardcover is definitely more cumbersome and less efficient than carrying a slim, compact e-reader that can store dozens of works. My e-reader is a fairly old model, and I have plenty of unread books on it as well. E-readers are great for traveling, as you can take several different books with you without the excess weight. I can search inside a book much more easily (where was the paragraph where he mentioned “caballero” again?), quickly reference the integrated dictionary (I have both English and German on mine), and highlight text for notes that I can group and then view all in one sitting.

But I still found reading this print-edition Michener more satisfying. When I read “analog” books, I like to mark interesting words or ones I don’t know, or tag statements I’d like to explore further. For instance, Michener says that the Spanish word for “gentleman” is directly tied to the horse (“caballo”): a man of the horse is a “caballero.” (The English word “chivalrous” for when a gentleman is particularly gallant and courteous has a similar etymology, but via French instead of Spanish.) He also described fish as sentient. Both these statements are things I wanted to look into in more depth. At the same time, I dislike interrupting my reading experience to go hunting online. I also don’t usually have a pencil to hand, and I refuse to write in my books in ink. So I tear off slips of scrap paper and use them to mark pages that I want to return to.

Once I’ve finished a story, chapter, or even the entire book, I sit down and go back through my scrap-slip-marked pages, hoping I can remember what it was I wanted to revisit. I check etymologies, look up mentions of historical personages or works of art, listen to pieces of music – trying to get more of a flavor of what the author wanted to say. I scribble notes in the margins, hopefully legibly, and in pencil in case some future owner of the book wishes to erase them. It’s also a chance to pass my hand over the smooth pages; maybe bend forward to smell the paper and ink; perhaps a hint of binder’s glue? The whole ritual is a part of the reading experience I really look forward to. I suppose it’s a way to prolong the enjoyment, like licking the spoon after you’ve poured the batter into the cake pan.

What camp are you in: analog or e-reader?