We’re now two posts into an epic email Victoria wrote me about the Kindle and to the point where she shares some thoughts only a Kindle enthusiast, someone who has used on extensively, can share… the reasons why she sometimes still longs for a bound book. The first part of this series was fourteen reasons I should buy a Kindle and seven ideas she had to improve the Kindle.
Things they will never be able to recreate in a Kindle:
The sensuality of reading a book.
The “new book” smell when you open a new edition. The “old book” smell when you realize how many people must have already journeyed with this same book.The sense of excitement that a new adventure awaits as you hurry home from the bookstore with your new treasure. The touch of the paper as you turn the pages. The smell of a finely bound leather edition. The heft of it’s weight. The careful separation of the pages still bound by the gold gilding.The ink stains you get from having spent the day with your favorite newspaper or paperback. The stains that remain on a favorite recipe that got tomato sauce on it. The colorful art of the dust jackets and slipcovers that protect your treasures. The pleasure of just looking at your library and knowing they are waiting; waiting for you to pull a long forgotten experience down to relive it.
The thin, the thick, the treasured, the sets, the matching volumns, the small Beatrix Potter books, the oversize coffee table books of panoramic photographs of Thomas Mangelsen and the Audubon prints. The silk ribboned bookmarks that you brush with a match to make sure they don’t fray.The hand me downs from family past, whose torn bindings speak their own stories. The notes, the letters you find in old books, long forgotten.
The physical, spatial relationship of a bound book.
An analog clock tell you the time in relationship to the whole. It is half past four… It is 15 minutes until… more often than not it also signals it’s passing
audibly, with a tick..a tock..a digital clock that tells you the time gives you a number only. It’s 10:48. Much is the same with a bound book in relation to a digital one. When reading a bound book, your bookmark tells you what you have read so far and how much of the journey is left to go. How many of us have
dreaded coming to the end of a wonderful book and have slowed the finishing of it until another could be readied? Read a page and couldn’t wait to get to the facing page you see out of the corner of your eye; that lies beneath your hand? When you get to the end of a good book, you want more..you don’t want to leave..you re-read the inserts, about the author, other books by the author, the photographs of the author, you look at the book cover before you finally put it in it’s new place among the good company on your bookshelf.
Not so with a digital book.
You turn on your Kindle and click. The page where you were when you left is there. “You are here”, no more, no less. Dots at the bottom attempt to unsuccessfully locate you within the book. No page numbers, location numbers, something about the format the software uses to change a book into a a Kindle edition… 136-3657… what does that mean? I suppose you could go to the beginning and the end, divide the pages in the book (having gotten the page numbers online) and develop a sense of where you are, but do you even want to try? I have come to the end of some books not knowing the end had happened. I click the “next page” button. It doesn’t work… I click the “main” button.. I have a choice to go to the cover or start over….oh, my goodness, I believe it’s over, imagine that! I didn’t realize….
It’s electronic.
The fact that the Kindle is electronic and once the plane is moving, you have to turn it off so that won’t bring the plane down while you read it. You make a “Note to Self” that although it’s usually a fairly short period of time before take-off (or landing), a paperback should be included just in case your plane winds up being 55th for take-off and you’re on the tarmac an hour waiting to take off.
Kindles don’t burn.
The concept of why we are “horrified” at the sight of book burning in “Fahrenheit 451″ or were so distraught as we read of the great libraries in history that were burnt to the ground through ignorance, fate or war, the knowledge that was lost. A child wonders why we just didn’t download another copy.
I think that’s it in a nutshell. All in all, the Kindle has it’s place with any bibliophile and in the coming education of all children. Will it ever replace
the printed word? It’s not quite dead yet. The harbingers of films’ demise through television hardly foresaw satellites and the need for 24/7 programming of hundreds and future thousands of “channels”. I understand that there are still many lovely collections of “scratchy vinyl” jazz collections of music that will never be digitized along with books in the Vatican that, even now, are waiting their turns to be carefully restored enough to transfer to a new medium.. There is not enough time or resources to “save” them all. The new media is being created too fast and in too great a quantity to go that far back. Even the creation of a newer medium will keep us “transferring” and “backing up” what we create today for all time. there is no “permanent” medium.
This post is originally from Bargaineering.com.
译文:
实体书打败Kindle的四大理由
我们有两个同事已进入到维多利亚邮件时代。他们给我发来邮件滔滔不绝地讲述着她是如何成为狂热的Kindle支持者，Kindle在她的生活中使用面之广达到了怎样的程度，以及……为何她有时还会渴慕能得到这个东西的全套。这一系列的介绍包括两部分： 十四个购买Kindle的理由及七个改善Kindle的金点子.
你永远找不到比Kindle更具有创造性的东西了：
阅读真书的感觉无法比拟.
“新书”闻起来总是有着一股崭新的味道。相对的，旧书一闻起来就仿佛能感觉到在你之前有多少人翻阅浏览过这本书。当你淘到一本新书时，那种仿佛得到新奇的珍宝般的兴奋感总会催促着你快点赶回家一览为快。那种触摸到崭新纸张的感觉，那股属于崭新皮革的味道，书本自身的重量，小心翼翼分开仍旧绑在书上的金箔时的感觉。在心满意足地享用了一整天你最喜欢的报纸或书籍后留在身上的油墨痕。那些墨痕就仿佛食谱中的番茄酱一样。为你的宝贝书本设计妙趣横生的书皮时的喜悦。在注视着只属于你的图书馆，并感觉到它们都在等待你的到来的心情，期待着你再次回到它们中去重温那些奇妙的旅行。
薄的，厚的，如珍宝一般，一整套一整套的，那一册册书脊，比阿特丽丝·波特的书，大号咖啡桌上摆放着的托马斯·曼格尔森的全景摄影集和奥特朋的合集。那些你为你的书籍们配上的随时担心着是否磨损的丝带书签。那些从家族的过去传下来的旧书籍们，将那些属于它们的故事捆扎在心里。还有那些你可能会在旧书中发现的夹在里面的旧字条，旧书信。
精装书的实体与空间关系
钟表之类的东西能够帮你随时知道时间：现在是四点半了……还有15分钟就……伴随着的还有钟表独有的声音，滴答滴答。一个电子时钟就只会给你一个数字而已：现在已经是10：48了。这跟普通书籍与电子书籍的关系是一样的。当你在阅读实体书的时候，你的书签能显示出你读了多少了，你经历到了这场奇幻之旅的什么地方。我们之中不知有多少人在读到书本的结尾时心生恐惧，并因此而放慢了阅读的速度，直到下一本书拿在手中。每读一页，就迫不及待地想要进入到你手中的下一行，下一页的世界中。当你阅读到一本好书的末尾时，你总会感到依依不舍，并想要回味更多有关的东西。于是你还会继续留心书本的其他附录，比如说作者简介，作者相关的其他作品，以及作者照片等等。在将它放回书架上那片书丛中为它准备的新位置前，你会不舍地再留恋一眼它的封皮。
这一点，电子书就无法做到。
打开你的Kindle，点击。你上次读到哪儿，这一次打开时它还在那儿。“就是这里”，不多不少。底部的小点失败地尝试着读取你的阅读信息。没有页码，也没有阅读位置的记号。格式化软件将书本转成了Kindle格式。136-3657，这是什么意思？软件总把你弄到书本的开头和结尾（页码可以通过在线找到），并随时找到你到哪儿了，但你会试着去做这些吗？我曾经直接被跳到书的末尾却根本不知道在结局那发生了什么。我点击“下一页”，无效……我只好再点击“主页”，不得不从头重新开始。我的天啊我真不想再继续这样下去了，只要想想就觉得够了！
电子设备
由于Kindle是电子仪器，因此在飞机起飞时，如果你不想飞机发生坠落的危险就还是停下正在阅读的动作，把它关掉吧。尽管起飞前给你的时间不是很长，不过还是足够你设置一下电子书签。一本平装书就可以在你的飞机起飞时能照常阅读，而不用无聊地等待一个小时直到飞机完全飞起。
烧不起来的Kindles
在我们看到书籍在“华氏451°”下燃烧的情景时及听到某些历史上有名的伟大图书馆在大火中因为意外或战争毁于一旦，那些知识的承载体们都失传时总会心生惋惜和“担忧”。当然，一个孩子可能会疑问为何我们不去下一份备用的材料。
我想理由还是很简单的。Kindle在藏书家和接受着新时代教育的孩子们中间还是有一席之地的。那些绝版的文字消失后就无法再现了吗？不，它们并没有消失。有一个预言说的就是人类会在电视与人造卫星那些24/7的节目和成百上千的频道里灭亡。我知道有很多将电子书称之为“潦草的乙烯”的可爱的收藏家们永远不会同意将梵蒂冈的那些古老书籍电子化。不过直到现在，也许都还有人在小心翼翼地等待着他们将那些文献用新的媒介保存的许可。我们实在没有再多的时间和资源去慢慢“拯救”它们了。尽管新兴媒体们已经在以极快的速度在向极大的数量发展着，不断更新的存储媒介都可以帮助我们将资料“转存”和“备份”，但我们同时也要明白，这个世界上没有“永恒存在着”的媒介手段。
这篇报道源于 Bargaineering.com.
实体书打败Kindle的四大理由