Dangerous Things
I’ve been watching Netflix’s You recently. It’s not good TV (far from it in fact) but you can see why people keep watching it. Thematically it’s a complicated mess and one that I’m not sure I have the patience to properly unpack.
The reason I mention that show is because a few times there’s this moment where some serious shade is thrown at people who read on Kindle. I would waste my time trying to find some supercut of those moments on Youtube to drop in here but pretty sure doing that is going to mangle my algothrim.
While this point of view is stated by the protagonist of the show (a bookseller cum serial killer) and should therefore be taken with a pinch of salt, the level of idiocy that the show gives to the other characters in those scenes suggests that the showrunners are of this view.
Which is not all that out of the ordinary. In fact, people can be really quite militant when it comes to reading on Kindle (note: I’m using Kindle as a catch all term for ebook readers, whether one of the Kindle competitors like Nook etc or reading on a tablet).
I know people that have told me they would happily read my books if they could only get their hands on a hard copy (interestingly, a lot of those people also ask for free hard copies, as though there are no production costs involved with that… which… the fuck people).
I’m pretty sure that reading on Kindle is superior to reading physical books.
Up front, I’m going to let you know I have huge issues with Amazon and their practices. I don’t own a Kindle but I do near enough to 95% of my reading on a tablet these days. Amazon is pretty diabolical and I have no joy in the death of the bookstore (particularly small indie bookstores; Barnes and Nobles losing money isn’t something I’m overly concerned about).
I also worry that the joy of discovery that comes from being in a bookshop is being lost. Amazon uses an algorithm to present books to us, so the joy of stumbling across something you’ve never heard of is diminished. You need to have a starting point to search through the millions of books on the platform, so one cannot simply walk into the store as they would a bookstore and see what they stumble across.
I get those people like the feel of books, and the heft of them, and the fondling of them, and the smell of them. I get all that because once upon a time I felt similar. But gun to my head, I can think of only one book that absolutely has to be in physical form. House of Leaves. That’s it. The book is playing with the formal elements of what a book is and can be that it is a weak approximation to read it on a screen (plus you end up getting a sore neck from twisting to read the text).
Ultimately though, what matters with a book is the words. We want to read the words. That’s what we get from a book. And sure, there are those that buy books as props for their lives. I remember reading somewhere that the majority of people that bought Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time never finished it. Instead, it sat on their shelves as a status marker. Look how clever I am the bookshelf shouted at anyone that took the time to glance at it.
I do love a good bookshelf. I have found some of my favourite books through the bookshelves of other people. I would never have started reading Umberto Eco if not for my friend’s mum’s bookshelf.
But that need to impress with the library of books one has collected bores me. Reading is a solitary pursuit. Even when we read to others, we are absorbing the words in isolation. Showing what we have read serves little purpose. You have read the books you have read, or you have not.
I have this suspicion that often those that reject Kindle reading are doing so from a position of judgement of what people read on those devices. That ebooks are disposable (there is after all no physical artifact, it is all just digital ephemera that can disappear as so much of the internet does) and by turn the majority of ebooks are of a disposable nature. Holiday reading, when you don’t want to lug a dozen books in a suitcase. Airport thrillers. Derivative urban fantasy.
Which is nonsense. There will always be some number of works that don’t make the transition from one format to another, sure. The same thing happened in the move from VHS to DVD. But the vast majority of works are available as ebooks.
I’d even argue that some books are superior in digital form. Infinite Jest notoriously needs two bookmarks to read and hands the size of an NBA player to lift. The ebook version solves both those issues.
Similarly, the chase for first editions of books. There are some first editions that are so notably different that being able to read that text is a thrill. The first edition of The Hobbit featured policemen and bicycles after all. But first editions generally are even more daft than wanting to show off your library of books purchased at the local chain bookstore.
Because with first editions, you will almost certainly never read them. They are investments. Unlike artwork investments, however, which at least you can look at, first edition books will be locked away in a hermetically sealed, temperature contolled space where no one is allowed to touch the work, let alone consume the work itself.
Here’s the thing. When I walk into a bookstore (or browse Amazon), I don’t just see shelves of books.
I see dangerous things.
The most wonderful, dangerous things.
I once wrote that books can show us the full gamut of human experience.
Books open us up to new worlds and new experiences. They let us see the world in ways that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to. They make us think in new ways. They open our eyes. We experience things through them. They change us.
And that is a dangerous thing. And that is the most wonderful thing. We become better from reading books.
It is one of the reasons that I reject the invisible prose movement. This idea that books should be full of writing that doesn’t call attention to itself (which is the most bizarre idea as the very act of writing means that the words call attention to themselves). That books should be stripped down plot telling with no flourish. The idea boggles my mind.
Books should be weird. They should go to strange places. They should spend pages discussing the right way to eat cereal. They should take lengthy detours to places that may not have the greatest bearing on the overall plot. They should have chowder recipes and songs and all kinds of crazy shit. It’s why books aren’t movies.
Which isn’t to say that some books don’t need editing (Order of the Phoenix I’m looking directly at you). But just cause a works strays from the main throughline or doesn’t perfectly conform to the theory that every scene should be driving the story forward, doesn’t mean there isn’t a point to those sections.
Books need to be weird because its a weird world. They need to stay that way. We don’t get If On A Winter’s Night… if books are essentially wikipedia style plot summaries. Books are wonderful, messy, weird, dangerous things. We should be thankful for that.
So in the first half of this school year, which our most recent report speaks to, we counted over 1,400 instances of book bans. And for PEN America to record a book ban, there has to be some sort of public, publicly accessible data out there. So either it’s been reported locally by journalists or it’s been put on a district website that’s publicly available.
Recently, Vox interviewed Kasey Meehan, the program director for Freedom to Read at PEN America.
1,400 books banned in the first half of 2023 from public and public school libraries in the United States.
There is a real, concerted effort on the part of a hyper vocal minority in the States at the moment to restrict what people, children in particular, can access to read.
I’m not going to stand here and say that what children consume shouldn’t be monitored in some ways. There are definitely books that I wouldn’t want my 5 year old reading. But I am also engaged enough with my kids that I can work with them on what is going to be okay for them to read. And I would never consider forcing my views on what my kids can or cannot read on to someone else. Especially not to the level of seeking to have something banned from a library.
Now, you may be thinking. Okay, a book gets banned from a library but its still available to buy. Sure, if you have access to decent bookstores and the money to buy books. Books aren’t cheap. And a lot of bookstores carry really stripped down stock these days.
I recently scoured my local bookstore for Roald Dahl (yes, I know he’s problematic) books. I could find Matilda and that was it. None of the rest of his catalogue was available. I was stunned. It may not be a particularly large bookstore but it certainly is giving enough shelf space to crime and young adult fiction that I would have expect at least Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to be there also.
Libraries play a crucial role in making available works that people would otherwise not be able to access.
(Before you jump in saying I’m all for libraries but isn’t this about Kindle. Sure, but most libraries offer ebooks these days. Support your local library.)
Conservative states in the United States are working hard to seriously restrict what people can read. Unless it fits with their blinkered view of the world then it will become verboten should they get their way.
And if books make us better people and they open us up to the world then that is a terrifying thing.
I want my kids to have the chance to read things that maybe I wouldn’t want them to. I want them to be able to experience new views on the world. I want to argue with them about things they have picked up from books.
I want them to have windows that extend outside of their own experience. Books can provide us roadmaps to the world. They tell us secrets that people won’t verbalise.
And it is for this reason that Kindle is the best way to read books.
‘Are You There, God?’ Reminds Us Why Books Are Still Banned, Even in the Digital Age
I was in fifth grade, longer ago than I care to say, when I first discovered the exquisite power of a Judy Blume book. A classmate came to school one day with a hardcover version of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. But at recess, she led a few of us down a grassy hill, out of sight of the playground, and lifted the cover to reveal a secret: She had taken a razor blade to the pages and carved out just enough space to fit a paperback copy of Blume’s 1975 novel, Forever. It was a story about teenagers and sexual discovery, and our friend knew precisely which pages, deep in the book, contained the passages we really wanted to read. We passed the slender volume around, girl to girl to girl, fully aware that the adults wouldn’t approve — and also, that they couldn’t stop us.
I love that anecdote. And it would be easier with an ebook reader.
Imagine a young girl living in Missouri, a state that is working hard to ban books from public and public school libraries. Imagine she lives in a conservative household. She has the sorts of parents that vocally try and get the local high school to remove books from the school library. That believe that any talk of sexuality is evil. That take her to church twice a week and tell her that her role is to grow up, have babies and stay at home while her husband goes off to work.
She probably isn’t getting an allowance that she can spend on books. She may even live in a household where she has to hide the books she wants to read for fear that her father will throw them out (or worse, tear them up… and I’m starting to realise I am largely recounting the first act of Matilda here, sue me we’ve been reading it recently in my house, but you get the picture I’m try to convey).
If her father finds her reading Forever, well, all hell is going to break lose. Books are dangerous things after all.
But with a Kindle, it’s so much easier for her to hide what she reads. There’s no cover that she must tuck into another book to mask what she is reading. That lack of money? She can just find a pirate copy. Which also solves the issue of access. If there is a digital copy of a book on the internet, then what your local community is doing to ban books doesn’t really matter. That solitary pursuit becomes more so. It is singularly focused on the words and the effect that they can have on the reader. No one can tell what is being read, just the reader and the text.
(Your paranthetical of the week: Yes, I am arguing that pirating books is fine. I think that everyone should have access to any books they want. I don’t think that not being able to afford a book should mean that you can’t read it. Obviously, I want people to buy my books and I would like to be able to quit my job and just live off money I make writing and selling books. I think that if you can afford to buy a book, then you should pay for it - whether physical or digital. But if you can’t afford to buy a book then I don’t think that should be a barrier. And ebooks make that significantly easier. I mean, the other option is shoplifting and I’m not really on board with that.
Image Comics found some years ago that if they released electronic versions of their comics without digital rights management, in other words so it was easy to pirate them, that they actually saw an uptick in sales on the next issue. Essentially, if something is being pirated it isn’t losing significant amounts of money so much as demonstrating that there is a large enough audience for the work which will in turn drive sales and profit.
Similarly, I’ll never hold a copy of Detective Comics #27 (the debut issue of Batman) in my hands but I can read an electronic copy.
Plus, anyone who wants a free digital version of any of my books can just ask and you’ll find it in your inbox soon after.
Kids, pirate books. You’ll be better for it.)
You may think me facetious with all of this. That’s fine. It may be that you are unpersuaded by my argument. That’s also fine. But next time you find yourself about to start on the rant about how Kindle books aren’t real books and the only way to read a book is with a physical copy, think of how lucky you are that you are in a place where you have no restrictions on what you read. How lucky you are that you have the means and the access to whatever books you want.
If you really love books, then you know it is the words that matter and the places those words take us to. How those words are read by us is moot.
But still… audiobooks are bullshit.