As most of you are probably aware, Borders bookstores have started closing down. The Borders Group filed for Chapter 11 in February 2011, and after filing for Chapter 7 they will liquidate all their stores by September 2011. After being in business for over 40 years, the bookstores will no longer be servicing the reading needs of cities, towns and communities. I suppose it can all be blamed on tough economic times and the hardships of recession. Perhaps it was poor management and inopportune business decisions. More than likely though, we can all point a finger at the digital age and scream how it is ‘ruining everything’.
For a while now the debate has raged regarding how much of an impact the internet has had on newspaper sales. Some argue that newspaper sales have never been stronger, and still others believe the internet has made the newspaper business more efficient. Now when I was younger, in the days before the internet, I read the newspaper every single day. I read the news articles, the weather report, tried to work out what all the numbers meant in the financial pages, and had a chuckle at the comic strips. Today, I sit here trying to recall the last time I actually bought a newspaper, and can’t. Sure my grandfather still reads the newspaper daily, to him the ‘interwebs’ is some dangerous and mysterious creature that should be treated with the same wariness as a pet lion. Ironic really, especially when you consider that when the man was born television wasn’t around, talking in motion pictures was still ten years away, the first Ford had only been on sale for a little over ten years, and putting a man on the moon was ‘crazy talk’. The flip side of this is that I bet a could go out and find a handful of tech-savvy kids that have never so much as held a newspaper in their hands.
How long before this fate befalls books? I love books, always have and always will. It is the joy of books that have led me to chase the elusive dream of becoming an author. There is something magical about holding a book in your hands, feeling the textures of the pages and inhaling that scent of the printed word. Older books, with their cracked leather covers and musty pages are even more fantastical. An unread book holds so much promise for the reader. What amazing journey will it take them on, where will their imagination fly off to? What knowledge will be learnt, what skill developed, what dream inspired? It always amazes me how a jumble of symbols on a page, organised in the right order and structure, can make one laugh or cry. It comes as no surprise to me that most of the world’s major religions have the tenets of their faith inscribed in the pages of their respective ‘Good Book’. A book is a symbol, a very powerful one. A book is captured fantasy, thought made tangible.
Then we have the Kindle.
Then we have the iPad.
Then we have the Nook.
Really, a Nook?
Hey, what you reading? I’m reading the Iliad on my Nook. Really?
Have you ever played that game with friends around the dinner table when you ask, “If you were stranded on an island, what three books would you take?” Have you ever had the smartass across from you answer, “Haha, I’ll just take my Kindle. It can hold over 2000 books.” Have you ever had to fight the nearly irrepressible urge to lunge across a table at someone’s throat so you can choke the life out of them?
I don’t know. Perhaps I am just turning into my grandfather, perhaps my ‘interwebs’ are those devil machines called ‘e-books’. That being said, I will giggle when I hear that someone can’t catch up on their reading because they forgot to charge their device. I will take delight during the power outage when I am sitting and reading my book by candlelight, as the battery slowly dies on their ‘e-book’. I will shake my head, and reaffirm my beliefs on religion, when I hear someone is downloading their holy book. I am not a technophobe, I know the world and its conveniences have to and will evolve. I understand the saving of trees, and the convenience offered by ‘e-books’. I realise they will hopefully provide accessibility to those historically and economically denied the right to books. Still, as I pass the next bookstore I see, I will pause for a moment and physically salute something that will soon be part of a bygone era. I will choke back a small tear as a piece of magic prepares to blink out of this world. On a more sobering note. The human race has a despicable tendency to burn books, to physically destroy thoughts and ideas deemed to be contradictory to some cause or another. Think how easy it will be for those tyrannical autocrats to exert their ‘mind policing’ now. All they have to do his hit the delete key.
