Post 2: What Is A Book?

A book is a window. A book can show you anything you want. It tells a story that allows you to use your imagination in a way that is completely unique. A book can take you anywhere you would like to go within its ink-covered pages. I feel that there will always be a need for the physical copies of books. Physical books were a part of my childhood. I always loved to flip through the pages of a new book and feel the weight of it in my hands.  Reading on the kindle, ipad, or nook does not give me the same feeling of entering another world in the way that paperback and hard copies of books do. Something about an eBook gives me the feeling that the book is synthetic or fake and does not create the same type of alternate reality that you could find in-between the pages of a real book. I agree that as Joe Meno said, “the idea of the book is more important than the actual form it takes.” The story that is being told will always be the most important part about reading and it does not matter what form it is in. In that way a book is similar to a close friend, it will never judge you, it will always be there for you and it can give you advice and tell you stories. However to me the weight, the texture, and even the smell of a book give it character. How you see the book’s size and cover can tell you a story without even opening it. When you look at old books you can see that every dent in the spine and every fold in a page can tell you a silent story that you can’t exactly read rather than just understand. Once you put that on a screen it loses its character and you are left with just a story in text. You are left with a clone that is just like everyone else’s copy of the story, there’s nothing personal about it anymore. I believe that every dog-eared page tells you something about the reader and how they connected to the author that completely disappears when it is no longer a physical copy of the story.