Sometimes print is still better than digital
By Mike Haynes
In the
digital age, maybe people can’t be defined anymore by the books they read. For
sure, not the paper ones.
I grew up with the idea that the
books you spend time with – voluntarily – can tell someone else a lot about you
as a person. For most of my life, that has meant physical books printed on
paper. And as much as I think technology is cool, I’ve decided that given a
choice, I’ll take a hardback or a paperback over a tablet or a computer screen.
I agree with Pulitzer-winning
writer Rick Bragg, who says it doesn’t bother him when someone reads his book
on a device that runs on batteries, because that means they’re reading it.
After completing three or four
books on a Kindle and an iPad – and reading part of one on an iPhone – I have
decided that I’m old-fashioned. Turning a page with an electronic finger swipe
is fun, but when it comes down to it, I have the feeling that the book I just
read is gone.
With “real” books, I have them on
my shelf long after I’ve finished them, and years from now, I can glance at,
say, “Elizabeth the Queen,” and recall not only the fascinating monarch and the
British history she has lived for 87 years, but something about what was going
on in my own life when I was reading that book by Sally Bedell Smith.
I plan for it to be on that shelf
for decades because, well, I may be a little self-centered. I envision people
visiting my house, looking at my books and thinking, “Hmmm, interesting that
not only does he like the Beatles and C.S. Lewis, but he has something about
John Wayne’s “Alamo” movie and all the Harry Potter books.”
If my books were made up of pixels
on a screen, no one would know what I’ve read unless I told them.
Yes, that’s narcissistic, but I
also have the motivation of a journalist that “Someday, I might write something
about the Titanic and will need to look up something in Walter Lord’s book
about it.”
I know that, more often, I should share what I’ve read. For example, a
decade after it came out, I read Donald Miller’s “Blue Like Jazz” this year. It
isn’t a traditional Christian devotional book, but I know it reflects the
thinking of a lot of young people in the 2000s. I hope more will read it as
well as Miller’s “Searching for God Knows What,” which I took on after one of
my pastor cousins, Roger, recommended it.
West Texans should read Timothy
Egan’s “The Worst Hard Time” to understand how terrible
the Dust Bowl of the
1930s was and how it affected so many families in our region. The parts about
Dalhart, Boise City and Shattuck and President Roosevelt’s visit to Amarillo
are enough reason for area people to open Egan’s best-seller.
“The Worst Hard Time” was last
year’s Amarillo College Common Reader, and this year the selection is “Wine to
Water,” by a young guy named Doc Hendley. It documents the North Carolinian’s
progression from self-absorbed bartender to head of a global charity that
provides fresh water to people in Darfur and elsewhere who lack that basic life
necessity. Hendley, who will visit Amarillo this fall and whose water outreach
will be a theme for AC student projects, started out with Christian
organization Samaritan’s Purse.
On the
other hand, last week in Sunday school, it was awfully handy for me to look up
some Proverbs from the lesson on my iPhone. A friend loves her electronic
device and has read scores of books on it. And my mother probably reads more
than she used to because of the convenience of her Kindle.
Still, I have to side with Rick Bragg, who wrote that he wants to “spend my last days on this Earth arranging and rearranging them on thrones of good, honest pine, oak and mahogany, because they just feel good in my hands, because I just like to look at their covers and dream of the promise of the great stories inside.”
