About a week and a half ago, I took one of my classes to visit the campus library to learn how to do research there; like everywhere I’ve taught, the librarians there hold special classes where they teach students how to use the online databases the library subscribes to, so I have an opportunity to sit back and just add little tidbits and anecdotes to what the librarian has to say. I don’t think I’ve ever had one of these library instruction classes go so well as this last one; the librarian and I spoke before the class, sharing our experiences of what doing research at libraries used to be like before the Internet age. It’s been several years now since I first had to deal with students who had no idea what a card catalogue was, so I have to explain old-style physical card catalogues to them and how they worked. The librarian and I even reminisced about the smell of the card catalogues, the wood mingling with the old cardstock and all the odours of generations past. Libraries still have that old book smell to varying extents, but the card catalogue was what always triggered my olfactory sense, and thinking about that smell makes me remember the old library north of my house that Mom took me to when I was little. (That library got remodeled in the 1990s and never had the old-style catalogue; I used the new layout of that library as a template for the primary library in The Prostitutes of Lake Wobegon.)
About a year and a half ago I had my first student bring an iPad to campus, and I knew that more tablet computers would soon come to my classrooms. It’s scary to think that many new college students these days actually consider e-mail an antiquated technology, since the sharp increase in teenage cell phone usage means that many young people have grown up using texting as their primary form of “written” communication. I admit that when I got my first Android phone a couple of years ago I had my geekgasms over all the stuff I could do with it, but that feeling soon died off as I began to see and use the phone more as the tool that I actually needed it for. I thought the iPad would be an unqualified disaster when I saw Steve Jobs introduce it — Rick Mercer’s “iSlab” parody pretty much sums up my initial reaction — but obviously these past couple of years have proven me wrong, and the tablet computing revolution is finally giving Microsoft the crippling kick in its bobbly bits that it’s been deserving for so long.
That said, I still find myself resisting tablet computers. I need a full-size keyboard for the kind of heavy-duty typing I do, and even my laptop feels like a stopgap measure for those occasions when I can’t use my desktop for some reason. I don’t know that I’m ever going to stop using old-fashioned desktop computers, at least for my work. There’s no doubt that tablet computers can be great toys as well, but my priorities have shifted so much these past few years that I’ve still yet to get even a Playstation 3 or an Xbox 360 because I just don’t game that much these days; the only reason I got a Wii was for Wii Fit and the other exergames that take advantage of the system’s unique capabilities. (The form factor of the Wii U’s controller makes me wonder just how it will handle exergames.) For a long time I just didn’t see a real reason for me to get a tablet computer; I saw their potential use for others, but not for me, especially when I had to really economize in the wake of last year’s personal debacles.
Economizing, though, does bring up the one potential big use I’d get out of a tablet computer, namely book-buying and reading. Given all the books I read, a tablet computer (which would be necessary for me because I don’t want to get tied down to a single e-reader format) might actually pay for itself in a year or two with the money I’d save buying e-books instead of hardcovers and paperbacks. More than that, my room was overrun with books even before I finished grad school, and the spillage out into the hallway and our loft is approaching critical mass; my primary reason for possibly buying a flat-screen television this holiday season is because I could wall-mount the new television and give myself more floor space for bookcases in my bedroom. Given that I live on the second floor of the house, I also have to worry about the cumulative weight of all these books and bookcases, and what that could be doing to the floorboards underneath me.
Having said that, the resistance is still there, and I think a good part of it is because I know I would miss the physicality of hardcover and paperback books. Laying in bed with a book is one of those many experiences that’s evocative of my childhood, of simpler times, and I’ve never had an easy time having those old routines and rituals disturbed, even when the change works greatly to my benefit. Besides, tangible objects have an element of realness to them that virtual objects don’t; I created a Kindle file of The Prostitutes of Lake Wobegon for one of my beta readers because she requested it, and there was a definite “cool feeling” there that she was reading it like she would any of her other books. If I get the novel published, though, I know that getting those first galleys, and then later the final, published books, will be profoundly emotional moments for me. Even if I ultimately decide to go the self-publishing route, getting a hard copy of the book and seeing my name on the cover will likely be a huge deal. Maybe that won’t be the case for later generations that grow up with tablet computers and e-readers as their norm, but those mental and emotional links to tangible, physical books are probably hard-wired into me at this point, never to be completely undone.
Last year, as I started economizing, I made sure to get the most out of my book money, taking advantage of holiday sales and the liquidation of Borders, and buying books that I knew would take me a long time to get through; just this year alone I’ve read Les Misérables, all the Harry Potter books, and just yesterday I finished War and Peace. I’ve still got a sizable collection of books I bought earlier and haven’t read yet, but the time for me to start purchasing new books will come soon. Over the coming weeks I’m going to have to make up my mind as to whether or not I want to get a tablet computer and start going the virtual route. A very large part of me wants to keep collecting physical books, regardless of the problems my book collection is causing me, but more and more it’s feeling like I won’t have any choice but to save up, get that tablet computer, and get used to this new way of doing something that’s such a huge part of my life.