General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"...some things should happen on soft pages, not cold metal." A letter from Harper Lee to Oprah:
In May of 2006, 46 years after the publication of her only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, reclusive author Harper Lee wrote the following letter to Oprah Winfrey, on the subject of reading and her love of books. It was subsequently published in Oprah's magazine, "O."
(Source: O; Image: Harper Lee, via.)
Dear Oprah,
Do you remember when you learned to read, or like me, can you not even remember a time when you didn't know how? I must have learned from having been read to by my family. My sisters and brother, much older, read aloud to keep me from pestering them; my mother read me a story every day, usually a children's classic, and my father read from the four newspapers he got through every evening. Then, of course, it was Uncle Wiggily at bedtime.
So I arrived in the first grade, literate, with a curious cultural assimilation of American history, romance, the Rover Boys, Rapunzel, and The Mobile Press. Early signs of genius? Far from it. Reading was an accomplishment I shared with several local contemporaries. Why this endemic precocity? Because in my hometown, a remote village in the early 1930s, youngsters had little to do but read. A movie? Not often movies weren't for small children. A park for games? Not a hope. We're talking unpaved streets here, and the Depression.
Books were scarce. There was nothing you could call a public library, we were a hundred miles away from a department store's books section, so we children began to circulate reading material among ourselves until each child had read another's entire stock. There were long dry spells broken by the new Christmas books, which started the rounds again.
As we grew older, we began to realize what our books were worth: Anne of Green Gables was worth two Bobbsey Twins; two Rover Boys were an even swap for two Tom Swifts. Aesthetic frissons ran a poor second to the thrills of acquisition. The goal, a full set of a series, was attained only once by an individual of exceptional greed he swapped his sister's doll buggy.
We were privileged. There were children, mostly from rural areas, who had never looked into a book until they went to school. They had to be taught to read in the first grade, and we were impatient with them for having to catch up. We ignored them.
And it wasn't until we were grown, some of us, that we discovered what had befallen the children of our African-American servants. In some of their schools, pupils learned to read three-to-one three children to one book, which was more than likely a cast-off primer from a white grammar school. We seldom saw them until, older, they came to work for us.
Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it.
And, Oprah, can you imagine curling up in bed to read a computer? Weeping for Anna Karenina and being terrified by Hannibal Lecter, entering the heart of darkness with Mistah Kurtz, having Holden Caulfield ring you up some things should happen on soft pages, not cold metal.
The village of my childhood is gone, with it most of the book collectors, including the dodgy one who swapped his complete set of Seckatary Hawkinses for a shotgun and kept it until it was retrieved by an irate parent.
Now we are three in number and live hundreds of miles away from each other. We still keep in touch by telephone conversations of recurrent theme: "What is your name again?" followed by "What are you reading?" We don't always remember.
Much love,
Harper
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/10/some-things-should-happen-on-soft-pages.html
Loves me some Harper Lee!
drm604
(16,230 posts)I can carry it with me and always have access to a whole library of books. How many forests worth of trees can be saved by electronic books?
Are_grits_groceries
(17,111 posts)However, I understand her feelings. I will buy hardcovers of some that I really like.
I think one can understand where she is coming from without jumping her for environmental reasons.
drm604
(16,230 posts)just pointing out that you can have books without paper, or cold metal for that matter. My Kindle has a nice comfortable soft cover.
sammytko
(2,480 posts)The first thing I downloaded was my favorite book "The Grapes of Wrath".
People read just as much now, but in different ways.
drm604
(16,230 posts)My Kindle, with the black "electronic ink" on the white background is as easy on the eyes as a regular book, and it uses very little power.
sammytko
(2,480 posts)she didn't refer to ereaders in her list of "cold metal." This was written in 2006, 7 years ago, when ereaders weren't common. Sony had one come out in 2006; the Kindle came out in '07.
I think her point is that people spend too much time with other electronic formats, and not enough time reading books, whether digital or paper.
She certainly makes a point about the culture of reading. Teachers know that children from homes that value reading start school miles ahead of those whose homes don't.
nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)But I don't think it'll ever replace physical books entirely, or at least, I hope not. There's just no way to replicate the complete experience of reading a *book*.
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)My only problem with it is, sometimes I run across a book that I feel is so important that I have to share it with others, and I wind up with books in both formats.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)Looking at the Kindle Fire charging itself on the end table just doesn't do that for me.
I suppose this is a personal thing limited to people who are sentimental collectors, but there is a quality to a well stocked bookshelf that is similar to a treasure box or a trophy case.
I'm not sure that you can reminisce over the memory chip of an e-reader in the same way you can a bound copy.
I do believe something would be lost in not being able to hand my mother's copies of Bambi and Tom Sawyer, with her awkward childhood signature inside the covers, to her great-grandson.
reformist2
(9,841 posts)drm604
(16,230 posts)The quote in the OP is saying that people who don't read paper books have minds like empty rooms. It seems to be saying that they are somehow not as well read. That is what I'm disagreeing with.
I'm not disagreeing with the idea that people can have emotional attachments to physical books. I'm disagreeing with the idea that people who read something other than a physical book are somehow not as well read. Are blind people who listen to recordings not as educated? Are their minds like empty rooms?
llmart
(15,556 posts)She never said that people who don't read books have minds like empty rooms.
Though she didn't say this, I think there's also the implication that people don't understand the power of delayed gratification either. We believe we have to have access to everything RIGHT THIS MINUTE. A good part of how US society has devolved in the past few decades is that we no longer understand the concept and the psychological ramifications of delayed gratification.
Even to this day, if there's a book at the library that I just can't wait to get my hands on and there's a waiting list, well I get excited when I see my name on the hold list moving up the line and I'm that much nearer to getting it and savoring it. Could I go out and buy the book online? Of course, but I also believe in being frugal.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)that I think Harper Lee would actually agree with--and which thereby, is a reasonable conversational path.
We do have a Kindle Fire in the house. One of the great things about it is that it makes accessible many old (19th century) books that are rather obscure, and that turn out to be FREE as e-books. As a consequence the e-reader is important to the SO's scholarship in 19th century American women authors and the early history of feminist connections to animal rights and medicine. That wouldn't be reasonable to do if the content of the works was different from their original physical format.
I do wonder about the impact of copy/sharing restrictions, as annotations of previous readers, particularly the annotations of authors and intellectuals who were previous readers, are interesting and sometimes very important to the development of critical/historical works.
LWolf
(46,179 posts)This was written in 2006, when ereaders and ebooks were not widely available. She's not comparing digital books to paper books.
She's saying that people who don't spend time reading books have empty minds. I agree. The format of the book doesn't matter.
TexasProgresive
(12,159 posts)My thoughts on this are here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2471693
reformist2
(9,841 posts)I use computers to read about current events, and for communication, obviously, but when it comes to reading anything longer than a few pages (screens?), I almost always have to print it out, or go buy the book.
loudsue
(14,087 posts)a certain part, I can tell by looking where I can find what I want to re-read. I have books who are old friends of mine on my shelves all over the house. My husband and I love books. He still has an aversion to ordering a book on his Kindle. And we love the libraries.
On edit:
I also like it that my s-daughter loves her Kindle, and I think it is great that people are using those devices. In my world, there is room for all kinds of people who like all kinds of things. I just like the relationship I have with books written on paper. Magazines and other periodicals, too.
I'm PRO CHOICE in every way, when it comes to life-style and personal issues. With over 6 billion people in the world, there should be lots of options.
reformist2
(9,841 posts)PADemD
(4,482 posts)Not only do I prefer reading actual books, but I can purchase a used hardcover of a book much cheaper than the kindle edition and then donate the book to our local library for their book sales.
Example here:
http://www.amazon.com/90-Minutes-Heaven-Story-Death/dp/B002IT5OKW/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1362660104&sr=1-9
Heidi
(58,237 posts)others reading materials "should" take. I'm mostly a book person: I love their smell, their feel, the sound of their pages being turned. But when I'm traveling, I read books on my iPad, and have bought both the print and electronic versions of some books.
LWolf
(46,179 posts)She's not comparing paper books to ebooks. Digital readers and books were not widely available when that letter was written.
She's comparing reading to modern electronic distractions.
Blue_Adept
(6,402 posts)I'm in my forties. I grew up reading tons of books from all genres. I love books.
But i hate storage. I don't like having shelves upon shelves of books that I'll rarely, if ever, re-read. There's too much new stuff to get into for me to do that.
But I hate being told that my "cold machine" doesn't produce the same feelings as a real book.
I find myself just wanting to curse the person out when told that.
The words are what counts. A powerful book is powerful whether printed in a book, written on a page, excerpted in pieces here and there or through various different digital displays.
Just change books to newspapers and you have a very different argument all of a sudden.
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)And since they're mostly lefty political books, it helps get the word out to more people.
Blue_Adept
(6,402 posts)I donated 99% of my books in the past year as I shifted to digital. But I also have 20,000 comic books sitting stored properly in my basement. I'll never read those again. So much easier to just manage digitally.
My feelings exactly - the words are what matter, not the medium. This was, in some ways, a glorified "Get off my lawn."
Aerows
(39,961 posts)But to me, the words are what matter, not the medium.
mountain grammy
(26,658 posts)I read "To Kill a Mockingbird" right after it was published, as soon as I could check it out of the library.
What an impression on my pre-teen mind.
I'm still waiting for the next book by Harper Lee.
So, I often wonder why someone could write a great book and write no more.
marions ghost
(19,841 posts)that's really all they have to say.
mountain grammy
(26,658 posts)than most authors do with a hundred.
marions ghost
(19,841 posts)and some people write hundreds of books & articles and don't really have much to say...
Are_grits_groceries
(17,111 posts)working with Truman Capote in Kansas on "In Cold Blood" did something to both of them. He became, well, Capote and she became a semi-hermit.
mountain grammy
(26,658 posts)marions ghost
(19,841 posts)I read both paper books (used if I can get them) and e-books.
I like paper books because you can skip ahead or read it backwards more easily and see it as a whole. So that's for stuff I consume circularly---like certain types of fiction and nonfictional reference.
I agree, books can have sentimental value. A bookstore or library is a much more interesting experience than cruising Amazon.
I don't really buy that e-books are better for the environment.
---------------
--For " read it straight thru" novels--kindle (or whatever device) works fine. Great for traveling.
Paper books will be around for a long time. Why get our knickers in a twist about this?
One is not better. They both have pluses & minuses.
canoeist52
(2,282 posts)Then it's back to paper. And I have walls dedicated to the legacy of that paper if that happens.
jamesatemple
(342 posts)I won't presume to tell others what mode their reading preferences should take. I can only state my preference.
My dear wife told me, tongue-in-cheek, that she was concerned that the foundation of our old house might give way under the strain of having to support so many books. My worn-out, comfortable recliner appeared to be an island in the midst of a stack of books. Bookcases were full with their tops laden with stacked books. Even my bathroom, fondly called "The Library", had a nice selection of hardbacks stacked on a small table. The possibility of hemorrhoids (or herorrhoids, as the case may be) has never daunted my zeal for reading in that locale.
Finally, I made the decision ~ I've got to thin my collection of reading material. But which books to keep, which to sell? Oh, my god! Each was a treasure...even the ones I hadn't got around to reading yet. Quick calculation told me that I would have to live to 116 or 117 to get the job done. That is, if I didn't buy any more books.
But why did or do I have such an affinity for books? Maybe the cause was as Ms. Lee surmised ~ a very early appreciation instilled by family readings (Mom read Huckleberry Finn to me and my step-brother when we were six years old); the paucity of books in our rented apartment in the early 1940's; the book-swapping that required a first-grader to adopt a business attitude. I'm very fond of the reasons for loving good books that was extolled by the actress Anne Bancroft in the movie, 84 Charing Cross Road. (Find and watch that old DVD if you can.)
Anyway, I loaded my 20-year-old Toyota pickup with some large number of books and sold them to a Half-Price Books bookstore. I haven't fully recovered from the trauma of that transaction. I'd reveal more to my DU friends but I really don't have the time...I've got to read some of the new books I just bought.
JI7
(89,278 posts)paper books to ereaders in this.