{"id":286,"date":"2008-11-26T08:19:17","date_gmt":"2008-11-26T12:19:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/?p=286"},"modified":"2008-11-26T12:19:38","modified_gmt":"2008-11-26T16:19:38","slug":"the-future-of-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/the-future-of-books\/","title":{"rendered":"The future of books"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday, I finally got around to reading the article in the latest Horn Book<\/em> magazine about Kindle and other electronic reading devices.\u00c2\u00a0 The article saddened me, since I am such a huge lover of actual books, and I worry that paper books will be gone the way of the dinosaur within my lifetime.<\/p>\n

But then yesterday the 6th grade book group met to discuss City of Ember <\/em>by Jeanne DuPrau (a great discussion, and hopefully I’ll find time to summarize it in the next couple of days).\u00c2\u00a0 After our discussion, I handed out the next book we’ll be reading, Skulduggery Pleasant <\/em>by Derek Landy.\u00c2\u00a0 One of the kids in the group commented on the rough-cut edges of the paper in Skulduggery<\/em>, and I mentioned that I love books that have those rough, imperfect page edges.\u00c2\u00a0 Then Sue piped up and said, “Whenever I get a new book to read, I like to feel it and open it up and smell it.\u00c2\u00a0 I just like the feel and smell of books.”\u00c2\u00a0 Several of the other kids in the group enthusiastically agreed, and began talking all at once about how much they love Books.<\/p>\n

So I asked them how they feel about electronic reading devices.\u00c2\u00a0 None of the kids had ever seen or used one, but they all immediately and completely dismissed the idea of an electronic reading device.\u00c2\u00a0 “How would I show my friends which book I’m reading now?\u00c2\u00a0 They couldn’t see the cover!”\u00c2\u00a0 “But I like to hold a book, and sit with it in my lap.”\u00c2\u00a0 “But I like the smell of books!!”\u00c2\u00a0 “It just wouldn’t be the same.”<\/p>\n

A very encouraging sign.\u00c2\u00a0 Hopefully their generation will love books as much as I do, and hopefully we’ll always have books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday, I finally got around to reading the article in the latest Horn Book magazine about Kindle and other electronic reading devices.\u00c2\u00a0 The article saddened me, since I am such a huge lover of actual books, and I worry that paper books will be gone the way of the dinosaur within my lifetime. But … Continue reading The future of books<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-groups","category-childrens-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}