It’s been two years since I started this blog and I just have to make this post fabulous…I’ve been wanting to write about the new Kindle for a while but I have felt guilty towards books!
As many of you know I am a shameless bibliophile but even though I am a rather “early adapter” of new technologies, buying a Kindle has not been a priority (you can carry a big chunk of your library—1500 books— and the neighborhood’s news stand in one Kindle).
I am tactile and love touching books and feeling the pages, the type, smelling the paper, the ink, etc…this little soldier guards my books valiantly!
This one—Herman Hess’ Narcissus and Goldmund— was one of my favorites and I have read it in three languages during the past 30 years (talking about obsession!) and I can’t imagine getting the same pleasure from reading it on Kindle…
Could I have appreciated Jean Michel Maulpoix‘s poetry without his signature blue covers? No paper?
Would he have wanted to be read on a gadget? Knowing him, I would say non!
“Blue makes no noise. It is a timid color, without ulterior motives, forewarning or plan; it does not leap out at the eye like yellow or red do, but rather draws it in, taming it little by little, letting it come unhurriedly, so that it sinks in and drowns in it, unaware.”
I can read Lukacs or Gopnick on a Kindle but not the Shahnameh (even writing about it is sacrilegious). One of my favorite blog posts is the one I wrote about this passion of mine.
I audited a bookbinding course on my last trip to europe and was pleasantly surprised to see that this beautiful art is not dead.
people in the atelier were restoring old books—resewing the pages, making new covers, etc—with a lot of love, attention and reverence. These fonts were for leather book jackets:
Is Amazon.com cannibalizing its own industry? They are the makers of Kindle.
I have to admit that even I would love to have all the newspapers I read daily, on one gadget. The gadget that carries most of my books to choose from on a trip; I guess all I am saying is that it’s very hard to read poetry on a machine—wouldn’t these beautiful poems feel/sound better on paper?
i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
e.e. cummings
“Parfois je me fais presque honte
De croire autant ce que je ne crois pas.
C’est une variété de rêve
Avec le réel au milieu.” Fernando Pessoa
Thank you all for the kind comments and support through these past two years.
Revisit my post on books here.
A book is a present we keep opening—again and again…
