Kindle a Love for Reading?

Isn’t it funny how meanings change and words get dressed in other clothes? Surely, no one uses “gay” today in the old Wordsworthian sense of the word? And you no longer talk of kindling an interest in a particular field or in the object of your affection. Today “Kindle” has come to mean a library. You download books, store them in your Kindle library in the cloud, recall them when you have a spare moment and get to read them on a screen at the press of a button.

Isn’t it funny how meanings change and words get dressed in other clothes? Surely, no one uses “gay” today in the old Wordsworthian sense of the word? And you no longer talk of kindling an interest in a particular field or in the object of your affection. Today “Kindle” has come to mean a library. You download books, store them in your Kindle library in the cloud, recall them when you have a spare moment and get to read them on a screen at the press of a button. No more rummaging in bookshops, no more lugging around bags overloaded with all the books that you want on a trip; just carry a Kindle and you’re fine.

And yet, what of those who love the physicality of the book? I am talking of those who drool over book covers. I have bought some books just because they looked so lovely. (I remember picking up Susan Sontag’s Where the Stress Falls purely for the gorgeous green of the cover, and later falling in love with her voice in the essays, the breadth of her knowledge and the exquisite style of her prose.) Then there are those who wax lyrical over the binding; some books have that gentle pliability of the spine, which allow them to fall open with no restraint, lending themselves to the joy of being read, without any of the resistance of a tight bound hardcover.