Things We Lose. Analog Books
Hopefully this will be the start of a series.
Things we lose.
Maybe it could be called the Get Off My Lawn series, but I don’t have a lawn. The flavor is definitely one of a guy getting older and wondering about the past and future.
Its Christmas morning 2018. I’m at moms. Mom and I have this ritual when i come for a few days.
We both love to read. And mom is a reliable source for new material or new authors. I love her excitement when telling me about a new author she’s found. Its the closest she comes to being a sales person.
Another thing we have in common is we both have iPads. Mom is pretty high tech for 75 years old. Maybe all 75 year olds are jamming along on their Kindles or iPads.
But when I visit, mom always ends up passing me Analog books. The ones that use actual paper. Hard cover and soft.
Like passing on a mix-tape. Or a burned CD of your favorite record. Mom passes on books and its these rare times at moms, between tours, that I get to hold and read Analog Books. I like cops and robbers. Murder mysteries. Business books and nuts and bolts spiritual books (a category I hope to invent one day)
Since I tour, I’m constantly having to consider the implications of space. Since I drive rock bands through the night I also listen to books on tape. Although theres no tape involved. I can’t really bring myself to use the term “audio books”
I burn through at least a book a week. And since I tour non stop, we’ll say i read at least 52 books a year. Or consume I should say, since the audio books are part of that consumption.
So, Ive got to consider how much room 52 books takes up in my life. Theres no question the iPad is handy.
But as mom passes a handful of books and I dive in, i realize what is missed with digital books. The BEGINNING and The END.
The experience of these.
When you have an analog book thats 2 inches thick in hardback form, you have a concept of how long you’re going to be stuck in this thing. You may have to talk yourself into it a bit. Mom has passed Greg Iles, The Devils Punchbowl on, in hardcover. Its a hefty one. It took me a few minutes of handling it, while mom did her sales pitch, to even crack it. I slowly read page one and now I’m hooked. But now I’m stuck carrying this beast around for the next….
And thats another part of the beginning experience. I’m now committed to carrying this book around for the next, say 10 days, while I work towards the other part that gets lost in the digital book experience. The END.
With an analog book, you can feel and see how many pages you have left.
335 of 422 is no substitute for 1/4 inch of pages.
Knowing how close you are to the end is an experience we only get in analog books. The story has you hooked and you can’t imagine how its going to wrap up in the 1/4 inch you have left.
The trade off for a life of stories touring with artists I love and those I don’t know yet. I’ll never have a library of books i read along the way.