Trust me. I have absolutely nothing against digital technology. I use it in one way or another every day. I am typing this on an iMac that my wife gave me. I am not connected to the Internet, but when I need to search the Web, I can use one of my wife's two computers or my associate's computer at the office when he is out in the field.
There was a great essay in the Nov. 2nd Globe by David Mehegan entitled "Bound up in books." "A good book is an artifact made with passion, study or struggle," he writes, and I agree. As he describes, my own bookcases are overflowing. His essay goes on to question the Kindle reader and digital technology's impact on whether we will read books on paper or computer screen.
As a child and teenager I never read many books. I read mostly magazines like Mechanix Illustrated or Popular Mechanics. My interest in books was initiated while I was serving with the Armed Forces of the United States standing in a chow line at Haneda Air Force Base in Tokyo, Japan, in 1955. The guy next to me was always reading. Reading in a chow line was really weird. So I asked him what was going on. He replied that he was a Mormon and that his church held education and knowledge in high regard. That evening I went to the base library and checked out a book and started reading.
Out of the military, I frequented my local bookshops. Paperbacks were just beginning to make their appearance and popularity. I was excited. I bought and devoured paperbacks by the dozen. Little did I realize at the time that I would eventually be overwhelmed with books, with little space to store them and little time to read them.
When I eventually went to college, I would stay up late at night devouring much of the Romantic literature of the 18th and 19th centuries: Balzac, Zola, Hardy, Dickens, Thackeray and Melville and many others. In my early 20s, I had caught the reading bug, and it was chronic!
One of the things I like about collecting books is that they are tactile. I can turn the pages forward or backwards. I can do whatever I want with them. I can read a book and give it away or sell it at a yard sale, I can stick it in my shelves with the hope of returning to it some day or I can donate it to my local public library. But what I do with many of the books that I read is I mark them as my own, thinking that they will be with me forever, like a good friend. That is one of the many benefits of books on paper. I can underline, I can Hi-lite, I can fold a page corner to keep my place, I can use old envelopes or actual bookmarks to mark where I left off last night as I fell asleep. Or even more, I can rip out a page and send it to a friend. How does an author sign a Kindle?
One of my favorite books of all time is "Playing Ball on Running Water" by David K. Reynolds, Ph.D. It is subtitled "The Japanese Way to Building a Better Life." My paperback is underlined, Hi-lited and has a gazillion Post-its page markers. The book describes the Morita form of therapy, which teaches us "how to rise to the challenge that each new moment brings." It can change lives.
Perhaps there is a connection between my tour of duty in Japan and my later reading a paperback describing a Japanese method of therapy. It all started with the guy standing next to me reading a book in the chow line at Haneda.
Books are like the PBS program "Globe Trekker." They can take you on an exciting journey to places you've never been or never even heard of. They provide fun, suspense, humor and valuable information. As David Mehegan says, keeping a book is like "keeping a friend nearby."
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Paul Fenner of Amesbury is a landscape architect.
