There was a time you could walk down the street or through a park on a sunny day and see people holding onto books. Whether the spines be cracked or the pages curling, people were holding onto them, staring at them, gobbling up every word. Now, a new force has come into our midst to stop this perfect picture. Something has come. Something is on its way to threaten everything we hold dear. Something that could be the eternal end for books as we know it. We call it...the kindle.
In a few weeks I'm off to America for two months to work as a counsellor at a summer school. After that I'm spending two weeks travelling. People keep telling me "you need a Kindle", "it's good for travelling", "it's cheap to get books". I appreciate this. I appreciate where they're coming from, I get their arguments but my answer is...no. I will not get a Kindle no matter how grand it is or how easy it is to carry. If I had a Kindle and I look to my shelf what would I see? A skinny black thing sitting there, not a dozen spines wanting me to pick them up.
My friend Elly told me a really great story the other day and I hope she won't mind me sharing it. She told me the story about her grandfather who was one of those men that loved having his things around him - just like me and her, in fact. His wife told him he had too many books and not enough room so, to keep them, he started stacking them up the stairs, each step you took would be a new collection of books. Not only is this a lovely image but it shows what books are about. Susan Hill reiterated the point in her book Howard's End is on the Landing "books make a home" and they most definitely do. What pains me about living in a student house is that all my books aren't with me. When I go home to my parents I justify why each book should come with me but know I have no space for them.
Books don't just make a home, they hold memories. When I pick up The Suicide Club and flick through it I remember when I went through my XBOX phase and I was sitting on COD and I had people screaming at me down the microphone why I wasn't moving, why I kept dying, I was, of course, sitting there reading, too engrossed in the pages. I know that when I finished Hero I was sitting on the sofa in my attic when it rained all day. When I pick up my copy of Harry Potter I see the wrinkled, orange pages from when my mother spilled orange juice all over it or The Witches from when I left it outside in the rain.
What would my Kindle do? Well it would break in the rain, it wouldn't wrinkle and it wouldn't throw me back to where I was. The Kindle is not my memory lane, it will not make my house a home, it's a silly threat. Will book shops shut because of the Kindle? No. Is the Kindle the end of us? No. Because book lovers love books, not just the idea of reading. Books will always be on the staircase.
