Being an editor who works in publishing as well as being a life-long bookworm, I am often asked about whether I read ebooks. I would often haughtily reply with a long, impassioned and well-rehearsed speech: that I work hard every day to create gorgeous print books; that I love the feeling of holding the book, turning the page and then putting the books I've read on my ever-expanding bookshelves. That I love the smell, the cover designs, the feeling of cracking a paperback spine, the weight of a book in my hand. That I love how I carry a book I'm reading around with me like a portable world and then that read book is a silent monument to a very personal point in time that is shared between only me and those pages. I love sharing a book I've read with someone else, so the pages are imbued not with just the memory of one but two people who read the same pages.These and many other reasons are why I love books and reading, and why I did not have an ereader or read books digitally.
This isn't to say I didn't consider over and over again whether I should buy a digital ereader. And I did so – it nagged at me that I wasn't embracing the latest technology in this one area, where I had with everything else; technology is a wonderful thing after all. I would ask Nick at regular intervals, "Do you think I should get an ereader?" I asked him so many times, that his answer became rehearsed too: that if I got an ereader, it would solve another of our problems . . . that my bookshelves are ever-expanding to the point that we really don't have enough room. As ever, he had a logical and practical approach verus my emotional one.
In my professional life, I am fascinated by ebooks and I try to work on them as much as the opportunity is granted to me. I love learning more about how they work, how they are read and by whom, which audiences they reach, which genres are read most as ebooks, but my personal reading preferences didn't match up with that fascination – which was strange, since my hobbies and my job are so entangled.
This Christmas, one of my presents was an iPad – an exciting present in itself, but one which I did not imagine would have such a profound effect on my reading habits. A few days later, Nick and his brother were having what turned out to be a 3-day 'bro-down' on Star Wars Battlefront. I hadn't bought any books with me, and with it being the odd transitional period between Christmas and New Year where the shops would be filled with crazed sales shoppers, I decided to download an ebook to read. That's where it began.
All the reservations I had about reading digitally; that reading backlit for a sustained amount of time would hurt my eyes, that digital reading would not give me any of the points of satisfaction that reading a print book every did, were forgotten. And while this is still true, what I didn't expect was that I'd love different things about digital reading. A person can hold contrary opinions simultaneously – it's what makes people so deliciously interesting, fascinating and unique.
The convenience of being able to download a book within seconds, depending on which mood I was in, the convenience of being able to read without hands, so I could prop up my iPad still being able to read it, leaving my hands free for holding a cup of tea or a glass of wine was an amazing eye-opener. Plus, I could choose different fonts to read in, different line spacing and text size and due to the beauty of dynamic text. Digital reading is an amazing convenience, that still brings to me the things I truly adore most about reading – the story and the language.
I realised that I had actually been a digital reader for a very long time – I have always read articles, Twitter feeds and blogs onscreen. All that I needed to do was to align my book reading habits with this – and considering from this viewpoint, I don't feel so contrary. My embrace of digital reading seems to have been a surprise to everyone who knows me, but mostly it's something I never expected from myself and it's good to keep everyone guessing, especially yourself! So from now on, from 2016 onwards, my reading habits have completely changed – I read digital books plus I can still fill my shelves with beautiful, ornamental hardbacks. The next step is to look at my own reading habits, exploring the types of books I will read onscreen and which I will still read in print. Technology really is a beautiful thing.
