Reading in a Digital World: On the path to conversion?

We've been having "the discussion" in our house.  Should we buy a Kindle or an iPad and take our reading into the twenty-first century?  If you like reading, you've probably had "the discussion" at your house too.  Heck, maybe you're reading the latest installment in the Twilight series from the Kindle DX.  Hardback?  So medieval!

I admit, I've been dragging my feet on this one.  I trained as a medievalist; I think vellum's pretty cool.  How can a screen compete with books the size of paving stones, precious metals, and images like these?  Not that I own any books like the manuscript linked above, but still.  For my fellow reader (FR) and spouse, though, the transition looks to be easy.  He "test drove" reading an e-book, using a PC and iPhone app called Stanza recently.  For him, the switch went flawlessly; in fact, I think he finished the book faster than he usually does.

The difference I think lies in our reading habits (although this Wall Street Journal blog post has an overview of a survey of e-books and gender).  My FR does his reading almost exclusively online.  News, blogs, it's all on screen and more information is a click away.  Switching topics is as easy as opening a new tab.  For him, the ability to have thousands of one books available through one, portable device is appealing.  In other words, e-books fit in with his already-established pattern of reading. 

My pattern of reading is different.  Reading is the last thing I do at night before falling asleep. Books are stacked haphazardly on my nightstand (a habit I might have to revisit if I move to a Kindle or iPad) and throughout the house.  On vacation I squish books into suitcases and carry-ons.  I pick books up, start and stop them at will, riffle through the pages.  My pattern of reading is firmly in the dark ages.

One thing this discussion has encouraged me to think about is the kinds of situations where I might actually want to use an e-book.  So far, I've ruled out vacations and plane travel:   one plus for a bound book is that you don't have to wait until after takeoff to read, and I wonder how a Kindle fares when hitting the beach?  Likewise, I can't imagine sitting down with a toddler and firing up The Cat in the Hat on the iPad, unless I really wanted to test the warranty. 

Realistically, we'll wind up with a Kindle or an iPad, and I'll venture further into e-books.  But I can't help but wonder how different the experience will be?  A few years ago, while waiting for a train in Birmingham, England, I had three hours to kill on a warm summer day.  I dashed into a City Centre Waterstone's, bought a book at on recommendation of a friendly clerk, and settled down to read in a churchyard. I carried the book home with me and it's sitting on a shelf today, a reminder of my trip.  How will that look on the Kindle?

Dear readers, if you have any thoughts on e-books, please leave a comment below!

Struggling in Shop Class. Again.

I am a poster child for Matthew B. Crawford's book Shop Class as Soulcraft.  I haven't taken a shop class since eighth grade.  And I wasn't particularly good at it.  Shop class for me was a series of lessons in the depths of incompetence.  My little plastic picture frame had bubbles in it from where I heated it too quickly when bending and shaping it.  Sewing in home economics class wasn't much better.  I could never keep even pressure on the little "pressure foot" that ran the sewing machine.  It either crept along or raced as I tried to keep one eye on the thread that inevitably tangled and another on the clock in the twenty minutes we had to complete the entire project.  I had twenty minutes because I'd spent the previous two weeks trying to thread the bobbin on the sewing machine.  Seriously, those projects were bad.  My sixth grade telephone pillow, tragically understuffed, resembled a giant pink and black clutch purse.  And we won't talk about the hot pink and white polka dotted ensemble I "assembled" for our eighth grade sewing  unit.

So go figure that in my early twenties I took up knitting, have produced several complex projects including actual apparel that has been worn outside the house, and am considering taking a class in, what else, sewing. So much for "I was an eighth grade home ec. failure"

Matthew Crawford has an answer for this.  He argues that people's interest in making their own clothes, growing their own food, and building their own decks is because of their desire to bring things closer to home:

We want to feel that our world is intelligible, so we can be responsible for it.  This seems to require that the provenance of our things be brought closer to home.  Many people are trying to recover a field of vision that is basically human in scale, and extricate themselves from dependence on the global economy.    

But there's a big difference between enjoying completing a home improvement project like installing a deck and building a house.  Likewise, a difference between knitting a sweater and making all of one's clothes.   I prefer Crawford's other point which is stated in the book's subtitle:  "An inquiry into the value of work."  I'll have more to say after I finish the book.  In the meantime,  I'd love to hear your opinions about the value of trades, blue collar versus white collar work and home improvement projects, dear readers. 

 

Beyond the Threshold of Immortality

Read Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and you'll never look at a blood sample in the same way again. The book, which follows success of scientists' successful attempts to grow and sustain the first immortal line of human cells in a lab, of course raises questions about ownership of genetic material: to whom ultimately belongs the rights to blood and organs, the scrapings of tissues we leave behind in little labeled vials when we go to our doctors' offices for routine tests? Given that millions of dollars can turn on our cells and the patents that can come from them, the question is far from academic.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is far more than a medical history. It is a biography, and, finally, an elegy, for a woman whose cells contributed to advances in medicine such as the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, and in vitro fertilization but who has been identified in textbooks, magazines, and on internet sites as Helen Lane. Even today her cells are known by the abbreviation HeLa. Skloot helps to shed light on the woman behind the cells and the family she left behind when she died of cervical cancer. The most moving parts of the book are Skloot's descriptions of the Lacks family fathoming and measuring their loss through the lens of the HeLa cervical cells.

By reminding us of the woman who exists behind the research, Skloot shows us both how far we've come and how far we need to go.

I'm baaack!

Dear readers,
Wow! I knew it had been a while, but not almost 2 years! Tempus fugit. Life and finishing my dissertation have kept me from informal writing. But the opus horribilis has been filed, and today I'm officially free to come back to reading and writing about books, culture, and whatever else catches my eye.

Welcome back and just plain welcome. If you stumble upon this collection of opinions, rants, and musings, please do leave a comment. I'd love to hear from you!