For me the question is no longer "to e-reader or not to e-reader?" but rather "which e-reader?" I am sad, morose even, over this reality. I feel forced to euthanize someone I love. Though I am a loyal lover and my affection for books only increases, I am contemplating, even expecting, to become part of their possible printed demise. Instead of killing by pulling the plug, I will be killing by plugging in.
Printed books are alive in a way books on plastic, metal and glass e-readers never can be. A tree’s death for a book’s creation is noble. Like organ donors, once-rooted trees live still, despite being declared clinically dead, providing a platform for the transmission of life-transformation. Via paper they give tangible, three-dimensional life to words, while e-readers flatten words, like museum relics, behind glass.
The e-reader question would not have earned prominence for me if not for an apparent impasse between two life passions I am compelled toward: the writing life, which is also the reading life, butts against my passion for writing from wide-ranging locations. Books are heavy travelers.
In my semi-nomadic existence, home is found in coming back to where my library lives. Sans spouse or progeny, my books are the family that makes each move with me and sends representatives along on all my travels, a family that has expanded exponentially as the years have ticked by. My bookshelves are part personal history and family reunion, a history recounted by which books were added when and which subjects have staying power, and part dream board, featuring books on topics I long to dig into and work by writers I long to emulate.
But books are increasingly impractical, while e-readers are more practical than ever. I can’t afford plane tickets for my whole book family when I travel, but an e-reader offers a way to make my library the equivalent of a ticketless, lap-held child. The impracticality of traveling with printed books becomes even weightier as I begin considering a possible longer-term move abroad. I wonder: Will the new place ever be home if the e-reader goes with me but my books stay behind in storage boxes? Fleshy though they may be, my books won’t be able to alleviate the pain of separation by Skyping me once an ocean stands between us. It’s nearly enough to cause me to call off considering the cross-Atlantic plan at all.
However, unlike my friends with flesh and blood spouses and offspring who rightly redirect their adventures, I am not being asked by my bound and boxable family members to stay put simply because they can’t go with me. In fact, it is contrary to everything they’ve taught about life and learning for me to remain here solely because parting is too hard and I’m afraid we’ll all change into something unrecognizable before we reunite.
But I am afraid. Greater than the sadness over leaving my books for a while is the fear of never coming back, the fear that once I enter the glass and metal and plastic reading world, I’ll never leave it. The warmth of a home decorated with books might become a nostalgic memory of a former life. The living history presently on display for visitors’ perusal and for reminding me of where I’ve been and where I’m going will be reduced to bits and bytes stored out of sight behind glass, untouchable and no longer alive.
I don’t think I want to live in a world like that, but I’m simultaneously aware that reducing baggage usually opens up new worlds and the best families celebrate launching us into new adventures, even if they’ll miss us. Thus, I’m reluctantly asking, “Which e-reader?”








