Book Talk
Went to a big box bookstore yesterday, Barnes & Noble. Got washed in a wave of nostalgia. Once upon a time I worked for a publisher and sold books for a living. Every year at the big industry trade show we’d collect reading copies of new books. Some years I’d bring home boxes of them. Yesterday, I felt like I was back at that trade show. I wanted one of every book on display. I restrained myself, however, budget limitations, and bought the book I wanted plus one other.
But I went home feeling good and ready to read where it occurred to me that consuming entertainment via a book had a big plus, in that when I bought it, it was mine. Unlike streaming, I didn’t have to pay the bookstore a monthly fee to read it again. I could just pick it up. And unlike a DVD all I needed was daylight to see the words on the page. Some technologies never go out of date. Although fewer and fewer people seem interested in the printed word because it’s easier to consume digital content.
And now I’ll step down off my soapbox and admit I’m old and grew up with books. I’ll also admit kids are doing different things these days, and that’s just the way of the world. Gutenberg changed it with moveable type and the printing press. Then it was radio and TV, and now all of that has been sucked into the internet. It feels good now, but it’s bad news when the power goes out. And that other book I bought, it was a ten-dollar copy of the Federalist Papers. It seemed fitting to read them on the 250th anniversary of the country and think about first principles.