Hard to say.
How I read: Kindle.
How I prefer to read: physical book.
I am not an avid reader, but I love the book as an object. I like the feel of the paper, its smell and I love the cover. A good cover can turn a decent book into an instant classic
But, eventually, I had to move to digital books. I move quite a lot for work, changing country every 2-3 years and bringing tons of books with me is simply impossible. The Kindle is a great toy, very light, good font rendering and it feels almost like the real stuff. Almost. A plastic box with a screen will never replace the smell and the grain of the paper.
I agree, and beautifully written post.
In fact, it is not just the feel of a book cover that I love, (and I do love hard backs to read, their ageless solidity, but loathe their weight when moving, or travelling), the smell of the paper (especially thick, almost parchment style paper, rich in the hand), and the experience of sitting down to immerse yourself in a book.....
Actually, I well remember shipping boxes and crates of books - and loading suitcase after suitcase - from country to country in my travels. One may wince at the cost, but we each have pleasures that fire one internally, and one of mine is reading, which means that I love the sheer physicality of a good book. More recently, many (but not all) books are off-loaded to friends (and colleagues) who remain in situ when I depart from a strange, challenging foreign location. Indeed, even in my current location, I find that my books are quietly breeding; there will be a fight for shelf space with the coffee pot in due course.
I love a well crafted book, one that is well written, but also one which the publisher has thought to pour resources into, where the cover art, quality of paper, font used, and sheer elegant heft all combine into offering an extraordinarily pleasant experience when one encounters it as a book.
A friend of mine is a publisher of an extraordinary feminist imprint (which he - yes he, a gay man and former theology student and apprentice priest who studied in a monastery years ago - resurrected as an act of homage and belief) and he produces the most exquisite books, almost invariably written by women, or republishes forgotten classics, where no attention to detail is too great in producing a physically beautiful object, and no expense spared in the superb production values, which means that the books he produces, are, physically, absolutely gorgeous, and objects of art in their own right.
With kindles, though, another great art form and cultural signifier will be lost, over time, one which I regret, and it is this. I'm writing of the personal library. I'm one of those who owns, possesses, has, thousands and thousands of books (mostly read, might I add). Many are on shelves (they have invaded three rooms in my mother's house, where floor to ceiling shelves are the norm), and many hundreds more live in uncatalogued boxes and cartons (yes, a nightmare for nerds, I know, but I have a fairly good idea of what lurks where, and if I don't, well, the primitive but rewarding pleasures of exploration and discovery await me), and they grow, spontaneously, wherever I put down roots for longer than a fortnight.
So, I have an extensive personal library, a source of great pleasure, (and no small pride) as I'm one of those who used to find not just distraction, and entertainment, but also learning and knowledge and information in books. I still do, as books allow one to to delve deeper than online sources, but now, of course, they tend to supplement each other. The use of one does not exclude the use of the other.
But, and here is an interesting thought, at least for me: whenever I used to visit a house, say a friend's parents' home when I was at university, or an academic's house, or, when in my teens or early twenties interviewing characters who had played some leading historical role in my country's history, in, say, the independence movement, who were then elderly gentlemen, I always examined their bookshelves to see what interested them, what moved them, what their intellectual as well as cultural and literary tastes were. Same with boys I knew at university - their book-shelves were subjected to a swift scrutiny (and yes, of course, some were found sadly wanting, but it was a handy short cut, and saved so much time). However, with the growth of the 'bookless' or digital, library, his particular means of analysing a person's character, increasingly, will be lost to us in future, a loss, I, for one, must admit I truly regret.
