Bogost on the Kindle

HE POSTED THIS IN EARLY MAY, but I don’t think I linked to it then. It’s a list of 10 sensible reasons why Ian sent back his Kindle after trying it for a few weeks.

I’m a believer in the eventual replacement of paper book technology, yes. That seems so inevitable that there’s no point denying it. The question is when, and with what. I know people who love the Kindle, and a few others like Ian who found it less helpful. All I know is that I’m not very happy anymore about owning 1,600+ books. I’d rather have them all on a handheld device, provided that the reading experience was the same.

The immediate “killer app” for the Kindle, for me, would be reading long classics. Classics tend to be very cheap in Kindle editions, often just a few dollars. And many of them are too long. I would rather have read Gibbon on a Kindle for sure, and the same for Proust and so forth. I never take my Gibbon out of the house to a cafe, because each of the three volumes is just too gigantic.

Sometimes I hear the reaction, against the Kindle, that “books will always be around.” But this is a case of setting the bar too high. Antique cars are still around too. And they are lovingly maintained by an international cadre of brilliant and dedicated people. And it can make your day to catch a glimpse of an antique car out for a spin. Nonetheless, it’s not especially relevant to daily life that “antique cars will always be around,” and I don’t see how paper books can avoid the same fate within the foreseeable future.