I hate big books

The "book in my hands" thing really irritates me

I never got it, the whole “book in my hands” rigidity. For one thing, I find hardcover books too heavy to hold with any comfort, and softcover books are way too fragile. And besides all that, the printing of books represents to me the felling of more trees. Ever since I got my first e-reader in 2010, I’ve been hooked. It was so lightweight and easy to carry around, and easy to curl up with on a couch or in my bed. I read all the time, so something easy to move around with is a must. I like to read in the dark too, and with paper books, it’s too cumbersome to keep moving the book light clip as I progress through it; it’s much more convenient to use a backlit e-reader that is soft on the eyes. I can’t tell you how much horror I felt when I saw my mom’s copy of Barbra Streisand’s whale of an autobiography; I mean, I love books that are long in content, but I don’t want to hold any book that’s heavier than my coffee cup. As a minimalist in all things, I also appreciate how e-readers help me reduce the clutter. As it happens, I do have a few traditional books lying around, special ones like the Harry Potter series, and Wuthering Heights. These are special tomes, and they make me smile to look at them. However, if I had piles and piles of books blocking the windows, it would be harder to appreciate the ones that are dearest in my heart.

I’m not the only aging librarian who has in recent years grown fonder of my e-reader. John is closer to my mother’s age, and he swears by his kindle for many of the same reasons that I do: it’s lightweight, it stores a lot, it reduces clutter, and he feels that he has his precious books with him wherever he goes. He, like me, adores the Libby app—a wonderful invention that gives you the power to borrow library ebooks and send them to your kindle. Of course, I know plenty of other librarians who refuse to read with kindle, because it’s big bad Amazon after all, and so, opting out of sending it to kindle, they read their ebooks in the Libby app. They have every right to be wary of big tech’s growing overreach into our lives. I just don’t worry too much about Amazon knowing my reading preferences. They’ve already learned so much about me, I’ve fed the beast plenty of tidbits about myself via GoodReads, Prime Video, and Audible. I guess what I’m trying to say is, as far as my reading preferences go, I’ve already dug that hole pretty deep and, anyway, I’m fine to be another statistic. And big tech suspicions aside, if you prefer audiobooks to ebooks, the Libby app is great for that too. I’ve currently got Shortest Way Home, written and read by Pete Buttigieg, sitting on my shelf in the Libby app. I like to listen to audiobooks while I’m driving, and the Libby app works well with Apple CarPlay. And every month the latest issue of The New Yorker comes rolling into my Libby app notifications. The nice thing about getting magazines in the Libby app is I don’t have to dispose of them. There’s no paper waste, no dusty pileup. If you want to make it go away, with just a swipe and a click, it’s gone. One downside: the magazines don’t present well in the iPhone app, only in the iPad app. The iPhone screen is just too small for the standard magazine layout, but it does work quite well on the iPad.

So, I don’t know, the whole “I gotta have a book in my hands” trope just feels dated, inflexible, and, frankly, limiting. What happens when humans realize that we are wasting as much paper as plastic? Are you just going to stop reading? I know that the answer to that for me is a resounding never!