The lure of books
Jonathan Franzen, who won the 2001 National Book Award for his novel The Corrections, does not like e-books because they seem impermanent. “A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough.” By contrast, a printed book has solidity. “Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper.”
Regardless of Franzen’s complaint, e-book sales are on the rise. Publishers Weekly reports that whereas in 2010 only 100 books had digital sales of over 25,000, in 2011 the number of titles in that category rose to 340. In 2010 five e-books achieved over 200,000 in sales, and in 2011, 35 titles reached that figure.
But Franzen is certainly not alone in preferring printed books over digital ones. Some critics argue that digital forms are changing the way we read. In The Shallows, technology writer Nicholas Carr goes so far as to suggest that the Internet is rewiring our brains and changing the way we think.
