Nothing Against Kindle

The magic of reading a physical book in our turbulent digital times.

Photo by Shayna Douglas on Unsplash

I was never the Kindle kind. Don’t get me wrong, I do own and use one.

I do it for the reasons you’ve probably heard before. I’ve moved far too many times and across continents. With a young family, space has sort of been lacking. Time, or maybe more appropriately, concentration, is in short supply too. It's like a ball rolling in many lanes simultaneously, or more like moving in groves in one place, with one’s attention constantly bouncing off the edges of too many things—the many shiny squares in our palms reflecting a perception of other’s lives or the sorts one imagines to be living. Cognitive overload or fracked attention. I’ve got these terms from podcasts I listen to. Another electronic contender jostling with reading for mental bandwidth.

Also, the convenience of an e-reader or an audiobook is valuable when one is found wanting for long stretches of time. You compress reading to fit crevices around life. The reading bubble gradually coalesces into something quite wholesome, actually.

But sometimes you need to hold the stories as they unfold and metamorphose into butterflies that unravel their wings and take flight. Caress the rough edges of the covers. Scribble notes in their margins. Watch the pages turn…