A Well Loved Companion

I have owned a kindle for a little over a year and I love it.  I especially love the instant escape it provides when I travel.  I am convinced, however,  that I can learn more easily from reading a book, as opposed to an electronically delivered book.  Not only that, but my creative thinking and creativity in writing are stimulated more by reading a book than by reading a book via my kindle.  I’ve also noticed that there are not very many scholarly titles offered for the kindle.  I wonder if there is just not enough demand for books that are used for learning.  One strong reason to cling to books is for schooling.  Books make learning in a group setting easier because by having the same edition we can avoid time wasting conflicts about citations.  Books facilitate conversation by their very nature.  We see what others are reading and are inspired to ask about it.

Although I can “highlight” and “bookmark” with my kindle, somehow my memory and creativity are triggered more by writing notes and underlining with a pencil in a book.  There are some pages of books that I have marked up that I can visualize now, years later.  To me there is something personal about a book that can’t be duplicated in the digital format.  Maybe you, too have had the experience of getting to know someone better by reading a book in which they have taken notes.  You can see what the reader thinks is important and discern their level of expertise about the subject.  If the book falls open to a certain page you can imagine that this was a favorite part of the book.  Important pages are often dog-eared or soiled.  Maybe it is the more multisensory experience of the book that is the key – my kindle doesn’t have that “book smell” that I like.

That reminds me, I want to read Reading in the Brain by Stanislas Dehaene, but not on my kindle.