When I was about to leave the checkout line, a guy asked a clerk if they had any Kindles left, and the clerk said they were all sold out. That struck me as kind of odd. Can you imagine having to turn down a sale of that size, just because you are out of stock? And why was this guy so keen on getting a Kindle at that moment—presumably too late to be a Christmas gift—was he suddenly keen on reading something that his Kindle would provide him? Does the popularity of the Kindle mean popularity in reading? How much do people read, anyway, and what do they read? Is this an area where statistics are any good at all?
I really don’t know how I feel about these reading devices, or whether I think it reflects on how much people read or what they read. I know that whenever I see someone reading a BOOK it kind of makes me happy, even though it’s usually a Harry Potter book or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I read quite a bit of text on my computer, after all. I guess what it comes down to is when I think about the last book I read, or the last several, or the many books I’ve read over the years, if I imagine reading them on a reading device, a Kindle, or a computer, or a phone, the idea horrifies me. Maybe it isn’t so much what I think the problems with new ways to read are as it why does the book as an object hold so much fascination for me? Is it—again, like so many things—just nostalgia?
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