Broken Books

My students think these books are broken . . . well all except for one. Can you guess which one. If you don't think so watch this. Seeing this was an eye-opener for me. I've never thought of books the way these students do. I've also always thought that a book was something that I needed to hold, to touch, to embrace.

I've always thought Garrison Keillor captured it well, "The great and ancient invention . . . the Book. . . . Slow to hatch, as durable as a turtle, light and shapely as befits a descendant of the tree. Closed, the objet d'book resembles a board. Open, its pale wings brush the fingertips, the spore of fresh ink and pulp excites the nose, the spine lies easily in the hand. A handsome useful object begotten by the passion for truth . . . . Ages before the loudspeaker and the camera, came this lovely thing, this portable garden, which survives television, computers, censorship, lousy schools, and rotten authors. Along with the Constitution, the blues, and baseball, the democracy of letters is a common glory in our midst, visible in every library and bookstore. These stacks of boards contain our common life and keep it against the miserable days when meanness operates with a free hand and save it for the day when the lonesome reader opens the cover and the word is resurrected. The day can come next month or a hundred years from now, a book will wait."

Somehow my students don't agree at all. So on this longest day of the year, summer solstice . . . the moment the sun stands still, so to speak, before it begins its movement in the other direction, I find myself needing to stand still for a moment . . . this moment when I am between book and technology. This is a little frightening and a little exciting.

I remember being a first-time college student when I was 30-something . . . such a foreign feeling. I adjusted and could soon compete with the youngsters. I remember my first attempts making meaning at a computer . . . rather frightening. I adapted quickly and realized how easy revision could be. So here I am between a book and the need to officially read a book by way of technology.

I know lots of you have already done so. I read lots of scholarly journals, newspapers, magazines and you name it online, but I've been a hardcore lover of the "great and ancient invention" as Keillor calls them.

I don't think I'll ever give-up books. My home is filled with them and they are gotten so cheaply in the Friends of the Library store, but I am giving lots more consideration to having more and more books online. Stanford University is now going bookless.

This is certainly a new season.
Good night from Southern California.
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol