When an E-book Can Save a Relationship

"The e-book…offers a more austere, direct engagement with the words appearing before us and disappearing behind us than the traditional paper book offers, giving no fetishistic gratification as we cover our walls with famous names. It is as if one had been freed from everything extraneous and distracting surrounding the text to focus on the pleasure of the words themselves. In this sense the passage from paper to e-book is not unlike the moment when we passed from illustrated children’s books to the adult version of the page that is only text. This is a medium for grown-ups.

"Add to that the e-book’s ease of transport, its international vocation (could the Iron Curtain have kept out e-books?), its indestructibility (you can’t burn e-books), its promise that all books will be able to remain forever in print and what is more available at reasonable prices, and it becomes harder and harder to see why the literati are not giving the phenomenon a more generous welcome." --Tim Parks

so i asked him not for the first or second time
what do we do with his overflow of book?
put together he can actually build a house of paper
except that it will take a beating from the elements

having given away my fair share of books
as birthday gifts wedding gifts Christmas gifts no-occasion gifts
& keeping only the memories of tales plus
the occasional verse copied into a notebook,
i have constantly trimmed my modest shelf
the way a gardener cuts
an unruly bush a wayward branch

now all i can claim
as truly mine
are useful references
for the material world of work
& certain books that
replenish the inner life

i said once in a moment of pique
if you never had time
for your multiplying
shelves of books in the last twenty
years of your life
how will you find time
in the next twenty?

some of his books
have the look
of children neglected
friendships gone stale
yet he still expects
the same warmth from them

it was a slip of my tongue
the slip wasn't accidental

i found myself thinking
not just of books
but of what we've become:
friendly strangers sharing a room
a gulf bridged by a reading lamp
& a desk supporting more books

--Babeth Lolarga


Source of quote: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/feb/15/ebooks-cant-burn
Image of statue of boy and girl reading from World Wide Web
Photo of personal library with dome from www.mymodernmet.com