I have taken wholeheartedly to the eBook. The reasons are simple, really. The ability to grab new books instantaneously, for one. The joy of a library that always weighs a pound or less, no matter how large it gets. The cloud services that let me keep my place across devices — start on an eReader, move to my smartphone, then back to my eReader, never once losing track of where I left off.
\nOne of my dear friends reminds me of something else. The things that are endangered by this new form:<\/p>\n
“Not an e-book fan yet… I don’t want libraries or ‘book signings’ to go away.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
My friend’s comment hit me full force when I came across this wonderful tidbit in Fiction Writer’s Review<\/a>, by Celeste Ng. Her piece answers a question I hadn’t bothered to ask: Why old books smell so good<\/a>.
\nThe explanation is quite elegant. Trees, the raw ingredient of paper, contain a polymer called lignin, which enables the tree to grow big and strong. As it turns out, lignin is also a source of vanillin. So when paper begins to break down, as it does in old books, it takes on the scent of that sublime South American orchid’s seed pod. Indeed, lignin has become a key source of artificial vanilla; here’s a bit of technical information<\/a> for those so inclined.
\nThis insight leads me to the larger list of endangered things, starting with the essential sensualness of books printed on paper, especially as compared to their digital counterparts.
\nThere’s the finger-feel of the page. The visual sense of how far I’ve traveled, just from seeing where my thumb rests. The simultaneity afforded by the all-at-onceness of the object. The heft of the thing, even when it’s “only” a paperback. To simulate these things, the eBook resorts to a bag of tricks. Animations that mimic the turn of a page… Bookmarks that let me return to a particular spot. But the smell, the heft, the all-at-onceness… I miss ’em. And, really, there’s no substitute…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I have taken wholeheartedly to the eBook. The reasons are simple, really. The ability to grab new books instantaneously, for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,26],"tags":[142,213,365,413,421,565,566],"class_list":["post-936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-butcher-baker","category-publishing-2","tag-butcher-baker-2","tag-ebooks","tag-lignin","tag-old-books","tag-paper","tag-vanilla","tag-vanillin"],"yoast_head":"\n
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