As an English and History major, I read a lot of books (the reading load for my history courses tends to be much denser than for my English courses, which surprises some people). I like to say that all I do in college is read and write, because it's pretty much true. Where I used to cringe at marking up my precious books with pencils - underlining important phrases and writing in the margins - it's become a pretty standard part of my daily life as a student. At the end of every semester, I always have this moment where, in the midst of beginning my first "book for fun," as I like to call them, I start in on my ritual action of grabbing a pencil or pen before reading, only to realize that I don't have to! I am not reading this book for academics, I am reading this for the pure joy of reading! While I deeply value what I have taken away from close readings and in class discussions of texts, when I'm reading for fun I don't want to think like an English major. Okay, in reality, it becomes exceedingly difficult as a soon to be fourth-year English student to turn my brain, which has been so wired in my undergraduate career to analyze and critique texts, off; however, when I'm reading for fun, I'm not actively looking for anything in the text, though often I'll comes across something in the text that is worthy of a mental note.
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| My current read: The House Girl |
So, naturally, I've been doing a lot of reading for fun. My friends from high school are all over the place (and in all honestly, I've only kept in constant touch with a few of them) and my college friends - well, they're all over the place too. Some have stayed in Morris, some have gone home, and some have started on exciting summer adventures - none of them are close enough to my hometown to meet up without some planning ahead. Also, as I stated before, I'm using these couple weeks before heading to D.C. as some serious down time. As an introvert, I desperately need it, especially since I'm soon heading to a big internship in a big city! Currently, I am reading The House Girl by Tara Conklin, my second "fun" book of the summer (my first "fun" book was We'll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down: Memoir of a Gravedigger's Daughter by Rachael Hanel, a Minnesota author; I picked up her recently published memoir after hearing her give a public reading from it at The Prairie Gate Literary Festivals, the annual literary festival we have at Morris). I discovered The House Girl in a book catalog that I picked up at the Stevens County Library in December, while I was on a mission to find and check out some movies with a friend. I eagerly looked through the catalog at that time, looking forward to winter break and all the reading time I would have then. An advertisement for The House Girl covered an entire page in the middle of the catalog. I was drawn to the pleasing cover (because, I do admit, I have the terrible tendency to judge a book by its cover), and the title of it suggested slavery or indentured servitude of some sort - it could only be a historical fiction novel, my favorite genre of fiction as the nerdy historian and history lover that I am. Sure enough, I was right - the house girl that the title references is indeed a slave in 1852 Virginia and the story follows her plans to run away, paralleled with a story taking place in New York City in 2004, where a young lawyer finds herself in a class-action suit working to seek reparations for descendants of American slaves. After receiving a gift card from Barnes & Noble in my Christmas stocking, I knew immediately that I had to purchase at least this book with the money. I've had The House Girl since late December, early January and have just found time to read it now; I must say, I'm very much enjoying it.
I've always loved books, ever since I learned how to read. I've been collecting books since I was in fourth or fifth grade. I have somewhere around 300 books, slowly collected over the years, mostly with gift cards or my own allowance money (back in the day when I had an allowance). Now most of the books that are added to my collection are the school books that I liked well enough to keep. The majority of the books in my collections are children's or YA fiction, but I've been increasingly adding more general fiction geared towards adults as well as the classics, though I buy "books for fun" less than I used to because of my poor college student status and also because I spent most of my year reading books for school. All of these books are real, paper books, if this wasn't already clear. Books you can touch with your hands, feel the pages as you turn them, smell them (my fellow book nerds will understand this), really appreciating the tangibility of them. My parents (yes, my parents) make fun of me for still reading "real books." They have both converted to the (apparently) wonderful world of e-books (much to my chagrin - they, too, have an extensive library that extends throughout our house that I love to borrow from; now they are no longer adding to it because they have all of their books on their clouds, or whatever it's called). My dad tells me it's better for the environment (but that's what used book stores are for and plus, e-waste exists too - though I'm hardly an expert on that). My mom tells me you can save so much money because e-books are cheaper than real books and it also saves space (again, used book stores and Amazon and I don't care about space - a room full of books is my idea of heaven). My mom asked me what I was going to read in D.C. since it would be impractical to pack a bunch of books to bring with me. I said I'd find a library there if I even have time to read and she said, "It would be so much easier if you had an e-reader." Perhaps, but I don't want one.
See, my problem with the e-reader is that it's just one more technological device that is taking over this already technologically heavy world. For me, a book is an escape from these technologies. I don't want to turn on another device just to read a book. It's ridiculous to me. I don't even have a smart phone (nor do I want one) but I spend enough time in front of a computer screen typing papers for school and communicating with people via e-mail and facebook (okay, just spending too much time on facebook in general), among other tasks that require a computer, preferably one with internet connection. Reading a book allows me some precious moments of simplicity away from this ever buzzing world. I don't think technology is a bad thing - in fact, it can be a very good thing in many different ways. However, I think humans are becoming entirely too dependent on it. One of my friends, who doesn't have a smartphone, told me recently that he was thinking of getting one simply because having a smart device is almost becoming a societal expectation - we went to a conference in January and in an effort to safe paper, the University that hosted the conference offered an online app for attendees to view the conference schedule. This really irked him because all he wanted to do was see the schedule but he didn't have a smartphone and therefore couldn't.
Me? I'm holding off on these smart devices for as long as possible. There will probably come a day when I'll have to cave and get one given the direction our society is heading. Yes, I may have to buy a smart phone one day, but an e-reader - for as long as real, paper books exist, I'll take those over an e-reader any day please and thank you. I'm not trying to go on a rant against technology here, though it probably sounds like it. All I want is to express how important books are to me and how, in a sense, they lose part of their magic when converted to an electronic format. Well, you might say, a book is a book is a book, regardless of what format it's in. Yes, in a sense - the story doesn't change if you're reading a book on an e-reader after all. It's more the simplicity of sitting down with a physical book that is half the magic of reading, at least to me.
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