Spines and Bindings

So this week's theme - aside from grading - has been books. Not a surprising thing, given my choice of profession, really. But I've been reading The Book on the Bookshelf by Henry Petroski, and we recently began a lengthy process of replacing all of our mismatched shelves with matching ones.

As a bibliophile, I like owning books. I like owning pretty books, old books, and books that I enjoyed reading. To this day, my favorite Christmas present was given to me at the age of 12, and is my facsimile copy of Shakespeare's first Folio. I adore that book (and it's damn useful in my line of study).

But I'm not the kind of book person who can't stand the thought of marring my books. I take care of my old books, yes, but my paperbacks... I use my books. I write in them. I dogear the pages. I highlight, underline, scribble, and circle. I break their spines. I use tape to hold together the covers when they start to tear and fall off. As far as I'm concerned, a pristine book is like a new stuffed animal - pretty, but clearly unloved.

Hypocritically, of course, I hate reading books other people have marked. Not because I'm appalled at the fact that they "defaced" a book, but because the underlining and words are not mine. I'm a selfish book-scribbler. I want the only words in the book (besides the author's, of course) to be mine.

In the heady days of Kindle and Nook and the iPad - to say nothing of the yet-to-be-released Overbook - some people say that books will become passe. That paper and ink will be replaced - as papyrus and vellum were - with a screen. I think that for most pleasure reading, devices like this will become common.

But for those of us in the business of books - for students, teachers, professors - the paper copies will continue to be needed. We need texts that cannot be accidentally deleted or erased due to a bug. We need our notes to survive. We need to remember the layout of the page, to be able to flip to a passage marked with a dogear or flag, to know what we thought when we read it the first or third or tenth time over.

And some of us will always crave the feel of a book in our hands. There is something comforting, something visceral about a book that no Kindle or Nook will ever match. Not to say that I won't buy one someday myself, but somehow a small ereader just isn't the same as a paperback. The thickness that tells us how much we have left to explore. The rough softness of paper pulp in our fingers. Even the black dust of ink-stain on our fingertips. Tangible words that don't disappear into black or white when we hit a button, but stay, quietly waiting, for our eyes to release them again.