Paper or plastic?

Paper or plastic. This is a question for me, not just when I’m buying groceries, but also when I’m buying—or borrowing—books. Do I buy the book printed on paper? If so, I have to either drive into Austin or order it online and wait. Do I buy the e-book? If I do, I can get the book instantly, which is good, because I usually put things off until the last minute. Even when I borrow reading material from the library, I sometimes have the same conundrum. Do I check out the paper edition or the e-edition?

I have some friends that live and die by the e-reader. In fact, I recently had to help a friend figure out why none of her new e-books would download on her device. Turns out, she had several hundred titles on her device and was out of memory. She’s a reader.

“E-books are easy to transport, easily fit into a purse, are lightweight, and I can read in the dark,” said library board president Mary Jo Jenkins. “It saves your place. You can also adjust print size, which is important for people of age or failing eyesight.”

On the other hand, Austinite Hannah Foeh never reads e-books, only those printed on paper.

“It’s nice to have the book in my hands, especially since lots of my books are second hand and they have that distinctive book smell, which I like,” Foeh said. “Also, I’m just not very good with technology so I’d rather go browse a bookstore on my own than worry about some algorithm just showing me what it thinks I’ll like.”

Research suggests that not only do we remember more of the books we read on paper, we also feel more emotionally connected to them. (The Guardian 2012).

I also enjoy highlighting parts of books that I especially like, whether it’s a particularly beautiful description or a hilarious anecdote. Yes, e-readers have a highlighting tool, but it’s just not the same. With paper, you can pick up a book, give it a quick flip, and see what you have marked.

I know many folks who read e-books out of necessity. Those who can’t easily get out of the house, or who read so much that they can’t make enough trips to the library or bookstore to feed their habit depend on e-books. In addition, e-books tend to be a bit cheaper than paper books. For those who buy 50 books or more a year, that can add up to real savings.

However, one of the joys of reading is sharing your books with others. Most e-books do not allow you to loan them to friends. Paper books can be loaned, traded, and given away an infinite number of times. Those who know me know that one of my missions in life is to increase 1000 fold the number of people who have read Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. I have multiple copies that I loan out as much as possible.

However, I’m not going to lie. In some cases I prefer the e-book. When a title runs more than 400 pages, I find it somewhat difficult to curl up with the massive tome. In those cases, I choose the lightweight e-reader edition.

I think the only reasonable conclusion to draw is to be grateful that we have both media available to us.

An update

Both Cherry and Inland (which I mentioned last month) were excellent reads. Karr’s fast pace and present tense in Cherry imbue the reader with a sense of urgency. The dialog and descriptions in Inland were especially impressive and apt. Obreht’s ear for language, her sense of place, and her compelling plot pull the reader fully into the story and keep her there until the heartbreaking conclusion.

Summer a time for reading indulgence

Summer is often thought of as a time to indulge oneself in activities that are not typically seen as “productive”: traveling, sleeping in, reading to excess. (I would argue that all of these are productive activities.) And many folks have their pile of books for “summer reading.” You know, the romances, the mysteries, the stories that we enjoy but rarely remember much of.

And part of the fun of summer reading is sharing with our friends the titles and summaries of what we’re reading. So, friends, here is some of my summer reading.

Last week’s read

Last week I finished Fauna and Family (1978) by Gerald Durrell. Those of you who enjoy Masterpiece on PBS will recognize the name from the series The Durrells in Corfu. Fauna and Family (originally published under the title The Garden of the Gods) is the final installment of the Corfu Trilogy, which recounts the Durrell family’s five years living on Corfu, a Greek island, before WWII.

Ten-year-old Gerald spends his days observing, studying, and collecting specimens of insects, birds, reptiles and mammals that he finds on the island. The book alternates between wonderfully lyrical passages describing the natural beauty of the island and the author’s fascination with the fauna around him, and the comical hijinks of his quirky mother and siblings.

A quick sample: That summer was a particularly rich one; it seemed as if the sun had drawn up a special bounty from the island, for never had we had such an abundance of fruit and flowers, never had the sea been so warm and filled with fish, never had so many birds reared their young, or butterflies and other insects hatched and shimmered across the countryside. (p 139)

If you like travel, nature, or laughing, you will enjoy this series. The first two books are My Family and Other Animals (1956), and Birds, Beasts, and Relatives (1969). The first book tends to focus more on Durrell’s study of nature than the other two, but there are some hilarious scenes also.

This week’s read

One of my all-time favorite books is a memoir by Mary Karr titled The Liar’s Club (1995) about her tumultuous childhood in East Texas in a dysfunctional family, focusing on that time her mother shot her father. It is both heartbreaking and funny. Karr’s style and the non-linear structure keep the reader on the edge of her seat. I read this book about 25 years ago on the recommendation of a friend.

I’ve been thinking about this book lately and went looking for it at a used book store so that I could reread it. I didn’t find it, but I did find another of Karr’s memoirs, Cherry (2001), which picks up where The Liar’s Club leaves off. In the prologue, we see 17-year-old Mary getting ready to leave home, and East Texas, for Los Angeles, and the author teases us with suggestions of the deaths, arrests, and overdoses that lead up to her escape from aptly named Leechfield. Karr’s poetic style keeps the reader engaged, and will evoke memories of childhood and adolescence (both the good and the bad) for those of us who grew up in the 60s and 70s.

Book club

Téa Obreht’s new book, Inland, was released Aug. 13. Inland is set in 19^th century Arizona Territory. My book club has selected it for our next meeting. One of the first books we read together was Obreht’s The Tigers Wife (2011), and it remains one of my favorites. If you’re not familiar with magical realism, it is a melding of the real and the fantastical, and Obreht’s books are an excellent place to explore the genre. The Tiger’s Wife won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award. And Newsday listed Inland in its “Best Summer Books of 2019.” I am starting it now.