Wondrous Stories

My life has been filled with books. I don't remember my introduction to what has become a life-long captivation with the magic of reading. The memory of Charlotte's Web is firm, but why I wanted to read it is lost in time. Perhaps it was the attraction of comic books, stories with words and pictures, the structure of a story with multiple visuals. Maybe it was being read to as a child, helping to build my vocabulary and to learn the connection between the written and printed word. Whatever the reason, whoever it was that put a book in my hands, I am thankful for the experience.

Amazon.com has announced that sales numbers for e-books have outsold regular book sales 105 to 100 since April 1st of this year. Physical books have taken a backseat to digital versions. As one book reviewer wrote, it was Kindle vs. kindling and e-books have won.

Does it matter how we get our reading material? The reading itself is the larger goal. Books we read help to develop our ability to think critically. We explore their content in our own imagination, bound by the magic of a good author.

Despite e-books becoming the norm, I am slow to switch from print to pixels, from my fingers feeling the paper pages to feeling plastic, from dog-earring pages to electronic bookmarks. I appreciate the wealth of knowledge available electronically, but I miss the tactile aspect of a physical book, one you can curl up with to take to the local coffee shop. Mostly what I miss is the smell of a good book, the lignin in the paper breaking down and smelling like vanilla, that heady scent filling used bookstores and creating a hunger in all of us.