Kindles Vs books

I'll admit one thing, I am painstakingly attached to my iPhone. However, that's as far as my love for technology goes. I can't help but find a lot of it well futile if i'm honest, where do we draw the line between convenience and plain consumerism? Correct me if i'm wrong but Ipads to me are just larger phones (which cost as much as a laptop.) I have a laptop and I have a phone, why would I need an iPad? But Kindles baffle me the most.

Sure I understand a Kindle has its practicalites, you can store over a thousand books on it. Pragmatic for commuters, teachers and students who need to carry around academic texts. Great for travelling too, but be prepared to turn it off for take-off and landing.

I even think it'd be fun to build up a library and appreciate that it's tonnes better for our environment but to be frank, I prefer books.

I've never been the type to go into WH Smiths and pick up a bestseller, I much prefer finding hidden gems mainly because I don't read popular romance novels or biographies anyway. What could be better than roaming a second-hand book shop letting the covers jump out at you, finding notes and messages scribbled inside and the smell, I just love the smell of old books. 

Once, at a car-boot sale a lady picked up a book from our table; “what's this like?” she asked. This lead to a full discussion about the book, I love that books can be shared and passed down through generations. What will be in one hundred years? Will we tuck our children up in bed and read The Secret Garden to them on a Kindle? I hope not.

When I visit someone's house I nearly always snoop through their bookshelf, I think a person's choice of books says a lot about them. Upon researching this I found many people feel the same, here's a quote I found from 7reasons.org which I think sums it up perfectly;

“The volumes you gather as you travel through life are a story in themselves. The spine creases of the well-thumbed volume; the stain left by the coffee you spilt when you first saw her; the enthusiastic underlinings of well-loved sections and the page corner-foldings of inspiration; the sheer sentimental, colourful, characterful accumulation of books. You can’t furnish a room with a Kindle.”

Books have so much character and tradition, do we really need to modernise them as well?

The Kindle's high contrast E-ink display apparently reads like a book making ideal for reading in sunny weather, you can even turn the pages. That's great but it's still an LED screen, with my laptop and iPhone I spend enough time as it is looking at a screen. When I curl up to read I don't want it to be with a hard plastic gadget, I want it to be an escape from the real world but using an electronic device doesn't seem like escapism to me.

Whilst Kindle's and other trivial gadgets will never phase out writing completely; clearly an author can market their book through any media, book shops, publishing houses and libraries will struggle.

Records were destroyed by tapes, tapes by CDs and CDs by downloads. I'm sure in years ahead everyone will own a Kindle and that's fine, i'm not totally against them by any means but I think i'll stick with my books for now, I don't need instructions for those.