Last week was a ghastly sort of a week on several fronts, so I was very happy when the weekend arrived. As usual, I spent most of Saturday afternoon in the kitchen. I roasted a free-range duck from the farmers' markets up the road, with a fabulous tomato, olive and mushroom sauce (a recipe from the excellent Bistro Food by Patricia Wells). Emboldened by my success with a nut tart a while back, I also made a chocolate and hazelnut tart. (I also made a cheesecake, but that was for visiting friends on Sunday so it doesn't really count.)
We invited a friend over, and spent the evening sitting in the library/dining room, enjoying our newly discovered functioning coal fire (the old part of the house is Victorian), eating, drinking wine and chatting about books. Books are an unavoidable topic in this room, as you can see from the pic. What was most bizarre about the evening is that this friend of ours, G, loves to talk about books - but only ever sees the movies of ... He Doesn't Read. I can never quite get my head around this; and every time he comes over, Spouse tries to lend him at least one book. We do love our books.
Anyway, G works in social media, and was telling us that he thinks books as they exist now will soon be a thing of the past and only eccentric collectors (he included us) will buy them. They will be expensive and very much a niche thing ... Hmmm.
6 comments:
I LOVE this room! Do you have one of those wonderful library ladders to reach the books on the highest shelves.
G is probably partly correct, although I wonder if he acknowledges a certain resurgence of vinyl in the last decade. And I'm finding as I work more and more with e-books that old-school technology is simply faster for some things --- flipping back to find a page, for example. But I think you and spouse and G would probably all enjoy A Super Sad True Love Story (altho' G will have to wait for the movie) -- books are rather suspect artifacts in it and the collectors of them seen as clearly eccentric.
Mater, sadly no ladder as the room is just too small to allow for it, but that's my next ambition (if we ever move house). I did pick up a library copy of Super Sad Trust Love Story but hadn't found time to read it by the time it was due back. It's still on my list!
I respectfully disagree with your friend!
I've been playing with my hub's ebook, and it's kind of a pain. Like Mater says, you can't flip to find a page. You can "search", but flipping a using your eyeballs is a lot easier.
OWW, it's funny, both mater and I have recently acquired e-reader (mine was given to me) and although I won't ever stop buying books (as long as they're available to buy), I will use my e-reader for books that I don't want to read, keep or lend.
Although I find it hard to imagine no books, here in Australia we're watching a huge number of booksellers go under (including some chains), so it does seem that the bookshop will become a rarity. Our universities have also been getting rid of vast numbers of books, which seems like a travesty to me ...
I like my ereader just fine for novels and magazines, pleasure reading in general, since I rarely want to go backwards in that case. (Though my Nook has a function to bookmark pages and highlight text, I haven't used it yet.)
Since I haven't read any professional texts on my gadget, I can't comment. The one thing that I do like very much about digital media is that it's easy to store. I'd say that about half of my storage unit (10' x 10') is boxes of books, most of which I'll have to pitch before moving overseas. Can't take 'em, can't afford to store 'em.
Oh, but there is nothing I like more than a rainy afternoon in a bookstore, and I hope that's a pleasure that future generations will be able to enjoy, too.
Rubi, thanks for the comment. My Kindle also has bookmark and highlight functions that I haven't used ... In my response to OWW I did mean 're-read', of course.
And yes, browsing bookshops is a great pleasure ...
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