MANILA, Philippines ? My love affair with books started at age eight with ?Nancy Drew #7: The Clue in the Diary.? It was my first real book, with full chapters and no pictures at all (except the illustration plates). From that point on, I started eating up books as fast as my eyes could drink in the words. It got to a point that it started interfering with my studies. My math teacher in third grade once asked me what factors were (in reference to multiplication), and still in a book haze, gamely ventured an answer in a desperate attempt not to be caught reading a book tucked under the desk: ?People who work in a factory?? That little incident earned me a book-reading ban during school days.
Still, I couldn?t resist the lure, and would stay hidden in the bathroom at home, with my contraband novel tucked in the waistband of my skirt. Eventually my mom figured that no kid takes that long to shower, and found me out and promptly grounded me.
Growing up, books became my reward for a job well done, or a treat when I was bedridden with the flu (Snoopy books and my first ever copy of Little Women). It also became a point of contention with my parents, especially when I started getting into trashy romance novels, the ones with subtle flowers on the covers, or out-and-out illustrations of long-haired muscled men clutching a girl in a low-cut dress with her melons about to fall out. My parents were horrified at the explicit content, with my dad offering to buy back every book I had that ran in the same vein.
My literary diet was mainstream fiction and edge-of-your-seat thrillers. Brain junk food, if you will. I bought into the ?Harry Potter? craze, queueing up for the fifth book at 4 a.m. and even sank my teeth into the ?Twilight? series. A book was not my idea of relaxation. It was getting lost in someone else?s world and being so immersed that I had to give myself a few minutes to float back into reality when the journey ended.
Reading books was more than a mental exercise, it was also a sensory experience, from the delicious smell of paper and ink, to the feel of the crisp page or the embossed script on the front cover.
Electronic reading
And then the e-book came along.
When I first came across it, it didn?t interest me at all. I scoffed at and denounced it, because a bunch of scrolling words on the computer screen could not compare to the feel of a real book. I even gamely tried it out, when a book I wanted to read was out of print but had a digital copy. I read it from my computer, and after the 30th page, longed for my bed where I could lie down and finish the book snuggled under the covers. Except my arms would probably give out holding the laptop the way I did a conventional book. Not to mention how dizzy I?d get after reading scroll after continuous scroll. I thought that would be my last foray into the world of electronic books.
Kindle
Until the Kindle was born.
The Kindle is Amazon.com?s e-book reader, a device that lets you download Amazon format e-books right into your reader. It also uses e-ink, a special form of electronic display that mimics the appearance of ink on paper, thus making the reading experience more ?book-like? and uses minimal power, giving you longer battery life while eliminating that harsh computer screen glare that contributes to a dizzying e-book read. While there have been other e-book reading devices like the Kindle, its strength lies in the volume of books available for purchase. To date, Amazon has a growing collection of over 250,000 current and noncurrent titles of different genres. Since the size of the e-book is fairly small, the Kindle?s user-accessible built-in memory of 2 GB can easily hold approximately 1,500 books. For a book-lover to have at his disposal 1,500 books wherever he is is pure heaven. Who would have thought we would be in the era of having a portable electronic library stored in a device less than two inches thick? Like an iPod for bookworms.
When it first came out, I lusted over it, and almost cried with envy when my dad gave someone a Kindle as a present. Still, I hesitated because I felt like I was cheating on a long-time friend. It was the literary equivalent of divorcing your wife of 40 years in exchange for some hot, young trophy wife. I decided to give myself more time. After all, I still had a pile of unread books waiting for me at home.
Amazon?s innovation
And then Amazon released the Kindle for iPhone application, which completed my move to the dark side.
Now, aside from music, videos and games, I can read books off my iPhone. Even better, with a working mobile Internet connection, you can download samples of the e-book you?ve been eyeing, read a chapter or two, and then be able to purchase it right from your phone! It?s like having a bookstore and library wherever you are. Talk about a dream come true! Sure, not all books are available as an e-book. J.K. Rowling, for one, has vowed never to allow ?Harry Potter? to be turned into an electronic ghost of its former self. But then there are other authors who have heartily embraced this new form of technology, like Stephen King, who released two novellas in an only-digital format (he owns a Kindle). A pink one, to my utter envy (the regular Kindle comes in only white).
Never fear, though, staunch bound book lovers, Amazon doesn?t serve to bring about the death of the paper format, since Kindle editions run from a standard price of $9.99 (roughly P500) per title. Certainly not cheap. E-books merely offer you the convenience of being able to read anywhere without the added bulk, a huge relief coming from a pack rat like me. Sure, the serendipity of discovering a kindred spirit through a commonly read book is not present in the e-book community (I?ve formed many friendships based on books we?ve read and loved), but you can also read all the trashy books you want without fear of raised eyebrows from the highbrow crowd. You can also keep your favorite titles wherever you go and easily bookmark beloved passages for easy rereading. Heck, it even remembers where you left off and automatically bookmarks the page for you.
There are a lot of e-books widely available not just for the Kindle. Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org) offers over 30,000 e-books of the classics, in different languages, all for free. With these offerings, resistance has been futile for me. I?m now a converted lover of e-books, and it?s made reading easier for me, especially in a hectic age of deadlines and work commitments.
Sure, I still miss the solid feel of a thick paper-bound book, and nothing compares to the sensation of eagerly turning a page to find out what happens next. But the pull is still the same. Books, whether electronic or paper, still have the same effect of sucking you into different worlds and dimensions. I still get to escape, except through a different door.
