Why the E-book is Ruining My Dreams

We all have little dreams that we play around with in our heads that we turn into something huge. I think that it's a shame that people don't talk about their dreams that often because I would love to know what everyone pines after; what makes people get up in the morning. Some dreams always stay just the way they are - far off desires that are ultimately unattainable (Mick Jagger knew what he was talking about) - but others come to fruition. If I was list my dreams in some kind of ranking system the first thing I would notice is probably just how ambitious I am and whether or not I can translate that ambition into something valuable. The next thing that I would notice is just how many of the things that I dream about having one day are attainable with some good old hard work. One of the the things that is right up there for me is having my own library. For those of you that have seen Frasier and have watched it as much as I have, the kind of room I'm talking about is the library that Niles' has in his apartment (watch this to get an idea). Sadly I don't think that I'm ever going to realise such an ambition. Not because I don't think I'll ever have a house that's big enough or a collection of books that's nice enough. No, I just don't think there is going to be any books in publication by the time I get there!

To anyone that owns a Kindle (or any other e-book reader) I admire your embracing of modern technology. I myself have had a brief 'shot' of a Kindle and I must say that I was hugely impressed by the display and the all-round experience but sadly I won't be buying one any time soon. I love the feel of a proper book in my hand, the smell of new pages as they are parted for the first time and the sound of the paper as I flick and swipe my way through. As you can imagine (from reading that passion that I have for books which sadly comes across as slightly erotic) I love book shops and I could spend hours browsing and only ever ending up buying one. You can already see the effect of the age electronic publishing because there are less book shops than there used to be. That may be partly due to Amazon and the like being able to sell books at an impressively low price (which I must admit is where most of my books come from nowadays) but I think that we will slowly see the demise of the high-street book shops - another nail in the coffin of my library dream.

So what can I do about this? Well at the moment at home we have a study in which the walls are lined with paperbacks, hardbacks, fiction, non-fiction and everything in between so I should probably enjoy that whilst I can. Another thing that I can take heart from is that those books (and any other that I buy in my lifetime) will not go-off and so I will always have the 'real thing' in my life. I've been in contact with some very old books in my first year at Law School and if there is one thing I've learned (although my goodness there's been a lot more than that) then it would be that if you look after books properly then they can last just about as long as you want.

I love modern technology more than a lot of people I know. I get on well with it and it appreciates me in return - a mutual relationship of productivity and procrastination. As I said I don't think I'll be the owner of an e-book reader any time soon because I'm yet to see an advantage to me personally. The only thing that might drive me towards it is that a lot of the reading I have to do for university comes in the form of journals and case reports which are all available as PDFs. Carrying around a whole semester's worth of reading would be better than printing and reading off of a computer screen. One promise I do make myself however is that I'll never lose touch with paper copies of my favourite books - they have more charm and you just don't get that new book smell from a kindle.

Thanks again for reading my electronic blog. Maybe one day I'll rename it 'Ironic Ramblings of a Teenager' but for now I'm happy.

Martin