They proclaim everywhere they sell them that e-readers are the new book and old style books are going into decline within years. Libraries are becoming virtual and existing libraries will be frequented eventually by scholars and those interested in the past.
Can this be true? No more the joy of feeling a book in your hands and that first fresh crack as you open a hardback book. No more smelling the inks or colouring the black and white illustrations? Browsing through racks of second hand books all with pages curled and spending your first few minutes uncurling the corners because that makes the book look better and besides curled pages hurt.
No more looking at stacks of books and just rushing to see what they contain, and being surrounded by that old smell of dusty books that is the only dusty smell in the world that doesn’t make you sneeze. I worked in a library when I was younger and they had the store for the entire region of fiction. In this large room where the public where not allowed to go, were compete collections of Asche, Balzac, Dickens, erotica from France, the original three volume Lord Of the Rings, Zangwill, Sterne, Zola, Disraeli,Elliot the Bronte’s, translations from countries I have never visited. . . a feast of great minds imposing in its presence that reached within two feet of the ceiling.
No more.
And I recall the library at Herculaneum where they found hundreds of scrolls and I wondered what the scribes thought when books took over. A library is one’s personality and an experience. We are saying goodbye to an experience that no one will know anymore until they turn the electricity off.