Kindle or Kindling?

I'm torn. Common sense and my ever expanding environmental awareness should make the purchase of a Kindle a no-brainer. Given my affinity for reading, I'd be saving a few thousand trees over the course of my lifetime. I'd shrink my carbon footprint substantially when you consider all of the energy that goes into producing the paper, printing the words and shipping all of that dead weight right to my local bookseller. It would take a few less trips up and down the stairs to move me out of my apartment and I'd free up plenty of valuable shelf space to display my embarrassingly large, yet eternally incomplete, toy collection. In defiance of these factors, I don't ever envision myself taking the plunge into the pageless abyss that is the Amazon Kindle.

To me, Kindle boils all that goes into reading a book down to it's basest parts which users then smear on a sheet of tinfoil, torch with a butane lighter and inhale through a section of plastic straw.

I'm certainly not rejecting the notion of getting concentrated information from a screen. Anyone who knows me also knows that I'm a slave to Wikipedia. I read an average of around twenty articles a day. I quest for knowledge, not only to be clutch at bar trivia, but to satisfy my unending curiosity about random subjects that pop up in conversation. Having Wikipedia in book form would not only be laborious to transport, but also nigh impossible to navigate. Therefore, I do concede that an undiluted information dump has its place in the world. It seems as though Kindle knows this as they tout Wikipedia access as a feature in their advertisement. To this I say, I already have a computer and an iPhone, so I don't need to drop the large ones on another device that lets me view free content.

The joys of reading are so many more than simply ingesting information. Walking into a bookstore, inhaling that rich, mildewy smell, and proceeding to skim the dust covers on the multitude of volumes contained therein is a visceral experience. Kindle removes all of the subtle joys of buying a new book and replaces them with cold, mechanical sterility. No amount of convenience is worth depriving myself of an hour spent nosing around a bookstore.

Kindle doesn't just ruin the purchase of a new tome, it ruins how I keep score of what I'm reading and it takes away the symphony of silence. I like tracking the progression of whatever I'm using as a book mark and I like the whisper and snap of a turned page. Removing the book mark after that final page has turned means that I'm one step closer to being as well read as I'd like.

I thoroughly enjoy the sight of my books lined up alphabetically by author on my shelf. Anyone who comes into my room can't help but notice that I'm a bit of a bookworm. I like talking about the volumes I've read and would like to read. Similarly, I feel like I can glean a rudimentary sense of what makes people tick based on their library. Replace all of that with a Kindle and we'd just have another stark, white rectangle sitting on our desks.

Kindle also comes with the option of listening to whatever you're reading instead of say, reading it. That's cheating. I don't count any books I've ever heard on tape as books I've read. That's because I didn't read them. I sat on my ass and listened to someone else's vocal interpretation of an author's work. I didn't make the choice to continue reading despite having tired eyes. I didn't have to stop reading to get a glass of water and spend those few seconds wondering what was going to happen next. I didn't put my own spin on it and I didn't have the option to decide for myself which characters to empathize with.

I'm not against reading out loud; I actually enjoy it. However, I enjoy it for the fact that I can stop and discuss the story with whomever is reading to me. If you ever see me sitting on a park bench arguing with a chunk of metal and plastic, it's time to lock me up in a padded room.

Most of the features highlighted in the Amazon advertisement are beyond comprehension. I've never had to worry about my hardcover of Trainspotting running out of batteries and I've never had trouble reading Harry Potter in direct sunlight. In fact, that's exactly where it functions the best. Now Kindle offers a web browsing function thereby making it a computer that doesn't compute or an iPhone that isn't smart.

Let's stop reinventing the wheel. For centuries we've gotten by just fine reading books. Not so long ago, having books was a sign of wealth and good repute. These days, they're being stigmatized as environmentally damaging and superfluous. At some point in the future, the sun is going to belch out a massive wave of gamma rays that destroys our power grid. We'll be without electricity, phones, computers, Kindle's and all other consumer electronics. While the world is busy collectively losing it's shit, I'll be locked up in my apartment with a shotgun pointed at the door and a paperback spread across my lap, utterly content with being an anachronism.