On Books

"Don't worry dear friends, you're safe here."

As you may have guessed from my tedious book-related posts, I'm quite the bibliophile, as, I believe, are most bloggers. I wonder though, whether most bloggers are as technophobic as I am? I am never the first to embrace new gadgets or the latest technology - I generally come limping along a couple of years after the rest. It's not that I'm resistant to change, or progress. I don't consider myself stuck in the past. I'm just very good at making do with what I know.

One technological advancement that fills me with a crippling fear is the e-reader. My feelings towards this piece of apparatus have reached dangerous levels. If I see one on my journey to work I get angry. Angry. I am that ridiculous. I'll be honest, I hate them. I will now rush to point out that I do understand the wisdom behind them and don't judge the owner of the device - I acknowledge, wholeheartedly, that this is my issue. It's not you, Mr E. Reader - it's me. For someone who travels a lot I imagine they are a godsend. All those words on such a handy device, who wouldn't love it? Me. That's who. I can't bring myself to turn my back on the old, trusted way of reading. I know books aren't perfect - as an industry publishing is probably up there with the least environmentally friendly. And some books are the most inconvenient things in the world - the one I'm reading now is a hefty hardback that, no matter how I position it in the Man Bag, manages to dig a corner into my thigh. But I love them despite these faults. I love the covers, the crack of a spine, the way they gather dust on the shelf. I LOVE THEM.

This rant came about thanks to Sky 1's adaptation of Terry Pratchett's 'Going Postal'. I've never read any of the Discworld books, despite seeing them in every bookshop I've ever been in. This one revolves around the quaint, old-fashioned post office struggling to survive against a newer, faster technology called the Clacks. The parallels with the real postal service and the advent of the internet and e-mail are clear, and they left me with a really depressing thought. I imagined a little postman, in the 80s, sorting out his letters for delivery - love letters, job offers, chain letters - letters from pen-pals who have never met, from distant relatives and angry constituents. Madonna's getting into her groove on the radio and he's thinking about rumours of a new technology that would remove almost all need for his services. He underestimates it - it doesn't see how it can challenge the status quo. How wrong. How wrong Mr Postman! Flash forward twenty years and he's delivering junk mail and credit card bills.

I know this is silly; it didn't happen quite like that and there is and always will be a need for the postal service. But will books die out? Am I being ignorant in refusing to embrace the e-reader? Will I find myself, in a few years' time, with no books to buy?

I stress that if any of you have e-readers, I'd never judge you for it. If anything, I'm a little jealous. Jealous that you've been able to let go when I'm destined to stand out like...like a man listening to a cassette, on a walkman in a room full of people with I-Pods.