Don’t know how the logistics would work, but I think that’s the best idea yet.

She tells him that computers don’t smell, and he says that’s exactly the problem. Smell is one of the strongest triggers of memory. He says that physical books have weight and knowledge should have weight and a sense of place. Digital knowledge is transitory.

I know I’m mangling the fantastic wording… it’s worth checking out on Hulu. It’s about 5 minutes from the end of the episode.

Personally, I agree that booksellers have a place in the world. And does have something to do with the magic in browsing. I have always wondered why it’s so hard for me to let my books go. I believe that it is about our experience with books.

We experience books with multiple senses. And while the kids of Maggie’s generation are already used to a somewhat paperless existence, they are also experiencing books with multiple, and sometimes different senses.

For the digital generation, it’s an audiobook, read likely by the author. For me, it was a voice, but either in my head or that of a teacher’s. (I hope that kids still have ‘library’ in school where they gather ’round the foot of the teacher’s chair and listen to their teacher or librarian read from The Jungle Book(s)).

For the digital generation, the e-book has weight, but it’s the weight of a digital device that is already familiar. There is not the same sense of ‘density’ or space that the book might occupy in both your bookshelf and your mind.

You certainly can’t smell an e-book, yet. That is something that rounds out my experience with a book. Those books deep in the cases of the library that have been untouched for years by hand or light. The paper that is slowly releasing a bit of itself into the air. That is something that goes missing.

My books were also a personal place for me to leave thoughts. Where I could see that I actually added density to the books themselves with little notes stuck onto post-its so that I could look back at the glimmer of correlation to my life that I found in a passage. I have yet to find a way to make a digital note provide as much of that emotional and personal connection.

Not wishes to, needs to, or even should experience a book in the same way. Which is why I do believe that Indie booksellers have a place in the future of books. Perhaps they must extend to the other senses as well. But never to limit those senses.

There is an extremely fundamental social-ness to walking into a library or bookstore that is strangely fueled by the desire to be anti-social and get lost in fact or fiction. I believe that if the keepers of knowledge and fantasy can continue to create comfort in human connections that help to continue that bridge to just more than the senses of sound and sight, then they will always have a place in our lives.

Thanks for your help,

My phone number is 781-507-1123

Thanks again,
Sonika