As a kid growing up, I always had a love of books. I did a lot of reading and pursued ownership of book series that I enjoyed, particularly in the fantasy and sci-fi realm. As a result, by the time I was in my 30s, I had many hundreds of books filling gigantic Ikea wall units. When my wife and I moved from Canada to the USA, we knew we had to get rid of a lot of the collection, and so hundreds of books went to the used bookstore, where of course we only got pennies on the dollar. But that’s how it goes.
We kept quite a few books though, especially ones that were small soft covers and some books that had sentimental value. As a parent, you always hold the hope (delusion? 😆) that your kids will be just like you, and they’ll want to read the books that shaped you in your childhood. That rarely turns out to be the case, but that’s a lot of parenting right there in a nutshell. 🫠
The journey to digital
It might seem surprising for someone like me — who has always been into technology — to be attached to the concept of paper books, but I really was. I enjoyed the feel of paper and the experience of holding a book in my hand. I can remember the moment that this changed and I decided that going digital was what I wanted to do: my wife, my son, and I met my parents in Mexico for a vacation and I brought with me a paperback copy of Stephen King’s The Stand. That book was ~1200 pages and weighed almost two pounds; it was big, bulky, and took up far too much room in my backpack. I regretted bringing it even though I loved the story.
When I got back from that vacation, I realized I loved reading, but I was over the need to carry around published words from an author in dead tree form. It was time to go digital.
Enter Kindle, stage right
Being the digital pack rat that I am, I still have the original email invoice for the very first Kindle that I ever purchased back in early 2011:
It’s hard to overstate what a dramatic difference a change like this makes when traveling; all of a sudden I could carry dozens (hundreds?) of books with me when I travel, and it would always weigh the same 6 ounces. For someone like me that likes to travel light, and be as optimized as possible, this was an amazing breakthrough; I haven’t carried a paper book with me while traveling for 15 years.
My wife, who also really loved paper books, was reluctant to join me in the digital world of reading. She became a convert though in 2013 when I bought her a Kindle so she could read in the dark when she was nursing my daughter. That changed everything for her, and now she reads on her Kindle even more than I do!
Exit books, stage left
I do the majority of my leisure reading in the evening before bed, and for many years, it’s only been on a Kindle (currently a 2021 Paperwhite). People have given me paper books as gifts, and I even bought a few hardcover books because I thought I wanted to continue the collection of certain series. Those books have sat in the bottom drawer of my nightstand, unread after 5+ years.
It’s past time to embrace the reality that I am simply no longer someone that reads paper books. A few weeks back, I took two boxes of books down to a local used bookstore and got a meager amount for them, but it’s better than them taking up space and not being read by anyone at all. Those were the first of many boxes of books that will be going to the same place.
Farewell, paper books. I have loved you for a long time, but it’s time to move on to the words of authors in a different format. I’ll never forget you. 📚
Coda: our vision gets worse as we get older, and some people stop reading because paperback books have too small of a font, and the large format print books are difficult to get. Digital e-readers solve that problem by allowing for easy adjustment of font size. When my parents each got an e-reader a few years back, they started reading more than they ever had before. Long live the e-reader!
