If you’ve ever used a Kindle on public transportation, you’ll be familiar with the hateful stare of the book snob. Everytime you whip it out – and it takes some deliberation till Decides to it’s worth making Such a public display of early adoption – there will be some glaring luddite looking over, at first shocked That anyone actually owns a Kindle (Which They Consider as ludicrous as Google Ice Cream or Amazon Drones) and then disgusted at the sheer post-modern cheek of it, as if you belong in the same camp as the kids playing music out of Their phone’s speakers. “He’s probably reading Steve Jobs’ biography, or 50 Shades of Grey,” they think to themeselves, before turning back to the Times Literary Supplement.
I’m exaggerating, but you can not blame the Kindle owners for being paranoid. We’ve endured wave after wave of dreary traditionalist rebellion against eBooks, and it still isn’ta abating. Whenever the topic is broached some smug dullard who might as well be wearing pince-nez and carrying an engraved cigarette case pipes up: “Can you smell an eBook? Can you build a beautiful oak bookcase for them to sit on? Can you hand one to a stranger in a Parisian cafe or inscribe one with a heartfelt note still readable When it’s bequeathed to the next generation of decades from now? “
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A recentstudy has got the dead tree defenders all triumphant. Apparently 62 per cent of 16-24 year olds still prefer printed books. “You see,” they are crowing. “Even the Xboxers, the sexters and the cyber bullies prefer real books. They May be addicted to watching pornography on Their phone, but That does not mean They can not enjoy a first edition Dickens. “Meanwhile, the Kindle sales figures have gone flat outperformed village hardcovers. The Luddites smell blood – they think the eBook is a fad on its way out.
It’s not. Growth May be slowing, but electronic books are too compelling to die. There are a thousand little benefits, but the one you’ll hear again and again from Kindle owners is this: it makes you read more. Perhaps it’s the lower prices, the huge, instantly available library, or the speed at Which you can tear through large underwriting (no one keeps Their Kindle text as small as in a paperback), but you do read more. Hours more every week. They might even ask Encouraging people to write more, too – a quarter of the Kindle sales are from independent publishers.
No, you can not proudly display your Kindle library in your dining room, or dash off some awful contrived inscription in the front Because You once saw someone do that in a movie, but that’s not really what books are for, ice it? They’re for reading, and That experience is even better on an electronic machine than in print.
This argument Should be the end of it, but it does not satisfy the snobs, Because for them books have nothing to do with reading. They are actually material for interior design – bits of incredibly naff “retro chic” pretense, rather than great works of art. Alongside your Smythson writing desk and your collection of vinyls comes a stack of neglected classics, destined to be judged only by Their covers. These people Should be off buying tweed or lobbying for signatures to join a Pall Mall club members, not lecturing on how to enjoy literature.
And by the way, the rise of the eBook does not mean the end of print books. That’s what the sales figures tell you – the two can sit by side, And they are doing it. In the digital age we use more than one medium to consume the samething. The book bores Should be cheering the new stability in the publishing industry, but they’ve missed it Because They were out shopping for a new ribbon For their Olivetti typewriter. So They continue to tell everyone how to read, fighting to defend a privilege no one is denying them.
Read more by Jack Rivlin:
Labour is using 18-year-olds as sacrificial lambs
Why today’s politicians are boring us all to death
Finally London joins the 21st century
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