Viva La Book!

I’m currently re-reading one of my favourite series - The Dark Tower, by Stephen King. If it seems I’m a bit of a crazy King fan, I’m actually not. I like some of his books, but TDT are the only ones I really love. There is just something about Roland - the gunslinger - and the world he inhabits. It draws you in and makes you feel that same mad passion that he does for his Tower - and also the love he feels for his companions.

I fell in love with these books as a teenager, and waited eagerly as each new book was released. After King had his accident, I, like many others, was distraught - ‘we’ll never learn if Roland reaches the Tower now!!’

But, thankfully, King survived, and so did Roland. To meet an end, such an end… I do believe I cried when I read the final pages of the final book and the conclusion was reached - the only way it could have ended, as King said himself.

Books like these, where the characters come to live in your head, are the most memorable. When a story spans decades, and is full of growing life experience, as these are, they seem to exude a certain truth. Some people bemoan the fact that King wrote himself into these stories - but I personally enjoyed it. To him, these people are real, and he makes them live for us, his readers, too.

Why do so many of us persist in reading a paper book - in other words a physical object we can hold in our hands - rather than just switch to reading on our computer?

Personally, there are a few reasons why I can never foresee myself giving up books. Now, in saying that, I am mostly talking about fiction, that is, novels. As part of the generation who did a great deal of their university education via computer (when I studied externally it was even more so) I tend to look to the internet and digital sources to find information.

Occasionally I will get a resource book from the library, or pick one up at a second-hand shop or book fair, but as a general rule, if I want to learn about something I’ll just grab my laptop and off I go. I know some people will cry - ‘but you can’t trust what you read on the net - and besides, how am I going to write notes in the margins’? Well, if you’re reasonably savvy, you can trust what you read on the net - and as for notes in the margins… you can attach comments to a lot of digital document formats!

And for that matter - since when can you believe what you read in a book?? Just walk into any new-age book store or section to see what I mean

No, what I’m talking about are stories. The type where you get lost, and turn page after page, oblivious to the time passing you by. I don’t know about you, but the thought of reading a novel on my computer doesn’t fill me with joy. Your eyes hurt, you can’t curl up comfortably… you can’t feel the weight of those words in your hand.

I have been partially inspired in this line of thought by the Kindle. Just recently in the US, Amazon has brought out a product called Kindle - a device solely dedicated to reading e-books. Now, we don’t have it here in Oz, but I had a look at it, intrigued. It certainly looks interesting, and I’ll be watching it’s development closely, as a lover of both books and technology. Perhaps it could revolutionise the way we read…

But for me, seeing all my stories lined up in a beautiful bookcase -  and being able to reach out and touch them - will probably never be replaced. What do you think?