BOOKS ON SCREEN

I'm somewhat of a bookworm. I like the feel of a book in my hands. I'm comfortable around books. I love rooms with plenty of books. So far, I pretty much regard kindle and e-books with coldness. But I regarded fax machines, computers and cell phones with disdain until I started using them. I don't know if I will ever come around to reading a book on a screen. I know you can highlight, search, and save, but the whole tactile experience is so incarnational and I would hate to lose that.

Reading for me is a mind-body experience. If the book is mine, I turn down pages, underline, hi lite, scrawl notes, arguments. I spill coffee and crumbs. When I finish a book I like, it's often bristling with little neon Post-Its, at which point I sit down and copy out the quotes and passages that have struck me. That's a kind of communication with the author, a kind of paying homage by way of the effort required to copy out his or her words, to re-experience and more deeply absorb them.

The demise of the public library scares me. So far, we are safe in San Francisco. Oakland is another story altogether. Generally I can't afford to purchase many books, so I go to the public library - something I like doing. It's another link to humanity. The experience of putting a book on reserve and having it delivered to my local branch offers me a sense of civic pride at knowing I am trusted and wanting to live up to that trust by taking good care of the book and returning it on time.

You can't use an iPad as a makeshift pillow when you're lying on the beach and decide to take a nap in the sun. You can't prop up the leg of a troublesome desk, or hold down a corner of your beach towel when you run in to take a dip! You can't stick your 'Thank You' notes or invitation cards between the pages of an iPad.

When I retired and moved last summer, I gave away most of my books, maybe fifteen hundred. I felt like I was near naked! Books multiply. People give you books, you pick up books. I kept half a dozen boxes and now I have most of a wall-length bookcase filled with books, not to mention the teetering piles on my coffee table, desk and bedside table. All the better! To those who say 'We need to save the trees' I say, 'We need to publish not fewer books, but less rubbish.'

But the argument in favor of e-books and against real books that leaves me cold is the one that says: You don't have to lug books around anymore! You don't have to actually carry books or magazines. You don't have to pack them, move them, feel the burden of their weight. This to me is symptomatic of an unfortunate cultural idea that the goal is to free ourselves from what are actually the right kind of burdens....

PASTOR EMERITUS