A house without books is like a house without windows.
A book is not a book to me if i can’t feel the cover, smell the book, and flip the pages. You cannot replace the intimate feeling you get from owning a physical book.
Let’s take a walk down memory lane
I fondly recall the time when i started to really enjoy reading. It brings comfort to my heart and soul. Books keep me company at time when i needed solace. I find warmth amongst the pages.
People said reading is a way to get out of reality. It isn’t, because reading is a way of finding meaning in it. You learn how to speak the language of your heart. And lastly, there’s not a bad thought that a good book can’t blow away.
The feeling when you walk into a brick n mortar bookstore, which is diminishing as you are reading this, and finding something that interests you out of so many treasures is just irreplaceable. You meet fellow book lovers in the shop, and the different book stores have their own culture and book list.
The emergence of digital media giants
On Amazon or similar online book sites, you get a giant depository of book directory. You want to read something? Download the ebook directly to your kindle and you can read them on the comfort of your sofa, sipping that hot coffee on a rainy day. You don’t have to tussle with the crowd, you don’t have to squeeze on the subway, and you don’t even have to step out of your house.
That’s technology for you. And yes, you are saving the trees by getting an ebook. You are making the world better by doing your bit.
But getting things instantly bring about something that is call “instant gratification”. When we want something these days, we expect to get them instantly. We have ran out of patience waiting.
Is that how we are going to bring up our next generation? That we expect everything to be at our reach instantly? Take some time to think about it.
Finding your own treasure
Book lovers would naturally want to walk into a book store and start digging away. Times flies in there, it’s like a place where they belong. The little shelf at the corner could contain some books which you never expect to find, written by an author you never know. But once you hold the book in your hands, feel it, read the back cover, you are convinced that it’s the book you are going to have.
Once a while, you head towards the shelf and browse through your books. Old books are like old friends, they like to be revisited. Reading the same book again at different stages of your life gives you different meaning, a different perspective. Old books stick around and give you good advices. It invoke your memories and remind you of the days gone by.
At the airport, i always have the habit of browsing through the book store, looking at their selections. The act of browsing the books, flipping the pages and being surrounded by the smell of books put me in a nice, calming mood. And i always leave with something in my hand, be it a book or a magazine. The idea of entertaining myself during flight is to get lost in the world of books. And, it makes me look that little more cultured to the person next to me.
The lure of e-reader is growing stronger day by day
I have never own any e-reader, but i have been toying with the idea of getting one for the longest time. It does have its place among keen readers. Who wants to lunge a few books in the luggage during travel? Granted, a book or two might suffice but you can never beat the weight and slimness of a reader like kindle.
The idea of storing thousands and thousands of books in your device is nice, not that it’s necessary but you can just zero in on the exact book you want to read at that particular moment.
My reluctance to get an e-reader might change, and the new kindle looks very tempting from the pictures. A perfect reader should rival the experience of reading from a physical book. From the impression of the kindle, it is definitely going in the right direction.
For now, I’m content with a good book in my hand, sipping whiskey on a cold rainy night.