Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Kindle-Free Zone.

I've had a lifelong romance with books; as a child I was kind of a dreamer, and loved nothing more than to curl up with a story and while away an afternoon reading. When I think of those afternoons, I remember the stories but I also remember the books themselves; summer afternoons at my grandmother's North Carolina house I would prowl the upstairs bedrooms and attics, where bookshelves abounded, and help myself to whatever was there. I read "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House", "Cheaper By The Dozen", "Little Black Sambo," "The Little Colonel", the Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris.. so vivid in my mind: "Tarbaby, he don't say nothin....' There were :Kidnaped:, "Treasure Island", "Gulliver's Travels", I didn't discern between the books and nobody ever looked to see what it was that I was reading, so I just plowed through, devouring everything there was. There was a loveseat in the window on the stair landing, just large enough to curl up in completely, and I would disappear into the pages of a book for hours at a time, where I went down the rabbit hole with Alice, and to the English moors in Wuthering Heights, slipped into the sidewalk chalk drawings in Mary Poppins and through the wardrobe to Narnia. Toad Hall, Piglet, and Wilbur the exceptional pig were all my childhood friends.

I loved those books, but a love some of the strange ones because I loved that time, still nights with cicadas humming, bobwhites calling, old metal fans in the windows trying to move the still, humid air; reading on the porch by lantern light while June bugs clung to the screens. The house was rambling, a Gothic fantasy with rooms that roamed forever, and those books smelled of that wonderful house. Between those pages you might find a faint whiff of mold and mothballs, old paper, and leather, names scrawled on the flyleaf going back generations, stiff, faded illustrations protected by tissue-paper overlays, the simple yellow bookplates of my great-great grandfather pasted on the inside cover of many of the oldest ones. When I read those, (I have a set of Dickens of his of which I am now reading David Copperfield), I marvel at the faint smudges that appear to have been caused by long ago fingers, the occasional scrap of ephemera tucked in as a bookmark, wondering if it was he who'd been reading it and what he'd thought about it, back in 1880 when the books were new.

I imagine the creak of a harness and the measured clop of working horses as the mailman approaches the old home place, ringing the bell at the iron gate at the front of the drive until a figure comes to meet the mailman, a box is procured--a crate, slightly heavy, the postmark from overseas making the event even more exotic. Opening the lid impatiently, the governor picks up the first book and holds it reverently to him, the way you might hold a child, or an icon. The green cloth bindings are unpretentious, these books are for reading, not for show.

When I think of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, I think of the woodcut illustrations that brought those books to life for me. (They belonged to my mother, and have her bookplate pasted onto the flyleaf.) Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, as well; Alice's attenuated neck as Tenniel depicted it, I think of the wonderful covers of those books, the feel of the cloth, paper, or leather bindings, their typefaces, the way the books are constructed. Some slim and compact enough to tuck into a pocket or a palm, like the Oxford Anthony Trollopes I have a few dozen of, some bulky and requiring a table for perusal, like the wonderful ancient botanical reference books with their hand-colored drawings that my Aunt Joan still has, that I remember leafing through in fascination, and the old family Bibles, with their frightening illustrations and pages of calmly recorded marriages, births, and deaths. The smell of leather bindings, fine old paper, and dust mix with the smell of furniture polish, lemon, and mothballs. And more dust.

I'm not anti-Kindle, though you might assume so. I can see right away that it has advantages, particularly in my own version which is on the iPad-- I can use Kindle, iBooks, Kobo, or a handful of other book apps that have libraries, and I've read Moby Dick, for example, for the first time, on my e-reader and loved the ease of it: the built-in dictionary, the brightly lit screen for darkened rooms. Lightweight, in the case of reading Moby Dick, easier to handle. I love tossing the lightweight iPad into my handbag and having all that printed matter at my fingertips.

But I think ultimately it is this, that when you buy a physical book, in analog. you own it. It belongs to you. You put your bookplate on the flyleaf, perhaps, or maybe just you scrawl your name on the inside cover, or even just scrawl your opinions in the margins, that book has been slightly altered by your reading it and in that process has developed further, even if that book has been around 200 years. My bedtime, as a child, was supervised by both "Goodnight Moon" and "Chicken Soup With Rice", tiny and weatherbeaten books with damp crumbly pages that barely hold together. But I don't own the Kindle version of "Atonement" I've just read, as much as I loved, loved, loved the story. A physical book will end up a bit dog-eared, perhaps, or with a couple of scraps, snapshots, or receipts tucked into its pages. A kindle story is untouched by human hands, pristine, belonging to some other world and unspoiled by contact with air and prodding clumsy human fingers.


So while the Kindles and e-readers have their place (particularly nighttime reading with that handy lit-up screen) I will always love my old, analog, decrepit books that, each time I read them, I make my own.