Real books

I can’t quite get my head around this one. I read a few days ago that the University of Chicago has opened a state-of-the-art library. The pubic space is full of computers. But there is not a book in sight. What? Obviously students are learning to learn without books. Actually most of us are. Amazon has announced this week that they are selling more digital books than print books. I have to admit that I downloaded the Wind in the Willows and was reading it at the pool while waiting for a little girl to finish her swim lesson. I understand the convenience of the digital library but I still like to see books around me on the shelves without having to turn on a machine.

In a recent magazine which still comes to me on paper through the mail, John Buchanan quoted this from John Updike,

“Shelved rows of books warm and brighten the starkest room...By bedside and easy chair, books promise a cozy, swift, and silent relapse from this world into another...Smaller than a breadbox, bigger than a TV remote, the average book fits into the human hand with a seductive nestling, a kiss of texture...Books hold our beams down; they acts as counterweight to our fickle and flighty natures.”