Growing up, my mom always said, “never say never.” I still say it a lot anyway — “I’ll never live in the suburbs; I’ll never eat at KFC; I’ll never shop at Wal-mart; I’ll never be a newborn/kid photographer; I’ll never wear mom jeans; I’ll never go to an indoor waterpark; I’ll never; I’ll never; I’ll never.” I actually hope that these ‘nevers’ remain ‘nevers’ in my life … but I recently went back on a huge ‘never’ — “I’ll never give up my paper books; I’ll never own an e-reader.”
Let me tell you, this was an accident! I bought an iPad. I didn’t want to buy one for the longest time … but then I realized how awesome it is for client meetings — for showing my portfolio and letting someone sit in front of me and interact with my work, literally. Then, I went on a trip … and as usual, I was in the middle of 4 books and couldn’t decide which to bring along (and, they were all too big/heavy). So I bought an e-book from the iBooks store. My first ever. I never intended to read on my iPad. But you know what? I LOVE IT. I actually love reading on the iPad more than I like reading paper books (and I actually use my iPad primarily as an e-reader now). I’ve since bought 4 more books for my iPad and I just love swiping my finger along the pages and seeing them turn. I loved taking a recent trip to Atlanta and “packing” all four books with me … knowing I even had the option to download more if I finished them all. I simply won’t go back to paper. Me. Reading e-books — crazy!
If you don’t know my story — I was an academic librarian for a huge university before leaving to do photography fulltime. Contrary to popular belief, librarians today are super tech-savvy, they read Wired magazine and all the techy blogs, they know the social media trends loooong before the rest of the world, they design websites from scratch and they actually LIKE e-books. I, however, was that librarian you probably envisioned before reading what I just wrote. I loved paper books. SWORE that I would NEVER find reading an e-book “comforting, cozy, amazing.” But never say ‘never….’
If you aren’t on the bandwagon yet — allow me to convince you of how wonderful and pretty the iPad is as an e-reader. This is the first book I read on it — Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. The book itself was great; Miller is an excellent writer. His main point was that we can create better stories for our lives — that everyday is a day we are able to do something amazing and worthwhile etc. Anyway — what I love about the iPad is there is no scrolling (like there is on a computer screen). The book is automatically re-sized to fit the screen. No matter what.
Afraid you’ll lose your place? Fear not; you can bookmark as many pages as you want and the iPad keeps track. Awesome. You can do this by simply tapping the upper right corner of the screen when you want to mark a page. A little red bookmark will appear and stays until you tap again to remove it. Afraid of not being able to highlight or take notes? Well — I think note-taking is better with the iPad. I am personally a huge quotation-keeper and under-liner. I love that I can freely highlight and take notes on any passage with the iPad and the iPad keeps track of the exact page a highlight/note is on. Now I can have all of my inspirational quotes and notes in one place and they are much easier to find. Speaking of finding things — there is a search function on the iPad and you can find any passage/topic/word etc in any book. Awesome!
I am a compulsive page counter-downer. Whenever I read a book I make a note of how many pages are in the chapter before starting — and I’m always aware of how many are left. With the iPad, it’s better (see a theme here yet? iPad = better :)). Along the bottom of every page there is a marker tracking how much you’ve read and how much is left to go. Not only does it mark your current page, but it also tells you exactly how many pages are left in the chapter you are reading — score! I seriously haven’t been this excited about a new technology in, well, my whole life. By the way, if you’re not obsessive about knowing your page number (or don’t want to know it), you can hide the page counter.
When reading paper books, I prefer to have the freaking hugest dictionary next to me. I can’t bring myself to keep reading a passage if I don’t know a certain word. It’ll bother me for pages and then I’ll forget everything I just read because I’m wondering what that one word was from 20 minutes ago. So imagine my delight when I saw the iPad had a built-in dictionary. For every word — I mean, it will tell you the definition of “table” or “laconic” — “boy” or “beaux artes.” I’m excited to download and read some Spanish books — the dictionary will be extra helpful then.
Along the resizing lines, you can flip the iPad horizontal and read that way instead. The pages? Well, they automatically re-size of course. I feel like the iPad is easier to read (comfort-wise) than a paper book. It’s comfortable in my hands and easy to hold on planes or in bed/on the couch. No more adjusting for paperback versus hardback. No more cracking spines to get the pages to lay flat.
Below you can see how the pages look horizontally on the iPad … and also how the first page tracks your bookmarks and highlighted/noted passages. This is from the second e-book I read, Patti Smith’s Just Kids. It was a remarkable story of Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith’s lives together and apart. Not only was the story amazing — but Smith is a master of words … I loved how she wrote the story. I’m finding biographies so inspirational to read lately — I’m always looking for great suggestions. Have any? Please share!
Do I still love paper books? Of course! But I’ve realized that I allowed my physical books to be connected too closely with my identity. And they shouldn’t be. I like being surrounded by shelves and shelves of books. I try to read a book every week and I’ve been doing that since I was a kid. I feel like people can look at the types of books I read and tell something about me. But (and this took a long time and I’m still working on it) why should that matter to me? My books are NOT tied to my identity. I exist apart from my possessions. At least I should.
The last two paper books I read were Nicole Krauss’ Great House and Emma Donoghue’s Room. I love contemporary literature and these are two of my favorite books ever now. Both are creatively narrated and raw, dark, haunting, lyrical and smart. Both Krauss and Donoghue play hardcore to the imagination and make me wonder HOW did they come up with that?! I read more for writing style than for plot — and that might not be your thing … but if you do love a beautifully and poetically written novel, don’t pass by either of these books.
So, did I convince you? Do you have an e-reader? What kind is it and what do you think? Are you left unconvinced? Why do you prefer paper books and what is holding you back from giving them up? Don’t get me wrong — if I absolutely fall in love with a book after reading it on my iPad I still plan to buy the paper copy for my personal library. Maybe that will change one day, but right now I believe that being surrounded by beautiful things is okay and actually a great way to live life. I just don’t need to own every book I read. And it’s probably better not to anyway.
Let me know your thoughts! Sorry I’ve been so silent here. I have a great session to share with you tomorrow and I’ve been spending my time working on several super exciting projects. Can’t wait to share in the future. Have a great Tuesday (we’re getting a major blizzard here — woo!).
