I am angry. I may swear. I may become impassioned and lean towards the overly elaborate and incomprehensible. For this I can only apologise. I also realise the slight irony of using an online blog to vent my anger but please bear with me.
Friends! Rise up against the Ebook! The Ereader. Whatever the bugger its called. I don’t give a flying monkey fuck.
In order to play by the Queensbury rules so to speak (as much as I want to give this scourge of all things good and holy a heavy kick in the genitals while its down), I have included for your perusal the opening to this piece of black magic’s website:
“If you love books, you’ll love the new Reader from Sony. Invented especially for book lovers, Reader is the best way to enjoy the new generation of electronic books (or “eBooks”). Slim and compact, it lets you store and take stacks of books with you wherever you go. It’s as simple and absorbing as reading a real paper book.”
Although I very much want to kidnap, torture, and shoot down this flimsy and linguistically uninteresting piece of filth that opens the website, might I just point out the disgusting, hypocritical bile of the accompanying video advert displayed on the same page. In fact, I may just go off on one?
The clip begins with the camera panning across a typical bookshelf. A pair of feminine hands appear, gently caressing the spine of each book, searching for one to withdraw. We can picture the scene...
(I will over romanticize here to help prove my point but I don’t care.)
The woman is attractive in a severe sort of way, possibly working in her husband’s Dover Street gallery. Her name has no relevance here, but we may assume it is aristocratically double barreled. She is learned; Russell Group and all that. She has enough poise to pull off her Chloé ensemble (the label only springs to mind as I read today, for those fashionistas amongst you, that Phoebe Philo, previously one of the label’s most foremost designers, has moved to Céline. Apparently we are to expect “amazing leather goods.”). She stands in the library of her tall Georgian town house. Visually, the tableau is a riot of colour. Uncompromising leather tomes of black or burgundy stand regimented like the royal guard, their gold inscriptions reflecting the expensive SW1 sunlight. A colony of penguins jostle each other self-importantly on the shelf above with their orange beaks and feet and cream bellies protruding (please correct me if my knowledge of collective nouns has gone awry). Above that - dictionaries, pulp, Wisden, biography, Mr. Men, Wilde, Harry Potter. The antique shelves almost buckle under the knowledge, the pleasure, and most literally, the PAPER.
The aforementioned spines all feel different. Glossy, matte, smooth, cracked, well read, unread. Some crumbling with age, or from being dropped in the bath. The books have individual scents. Chalky new or dusty, nostalgic old. Each has its own separate character. Dedications on the front page, phone numbers on the back. Bought at an airport, borrowed from a friend.
Each is a tactile and indeed (forgive me for the usage of one of my old English teacher’s favourite words) a wholly SENSUAL experience.
...And from this personal museum, she withdraws a small device. A satanic piece of puke-ridden garbage. It is like a piece of dung, only clinical to the touch and less visually interesting. Sorry. It fits easily into the palm. Its ‘revolutionary eInk display will amaze.’ And using it ‘couldn’t be simpler.’ Well here’s an idea you morons.
What is simpler than picking up a sodding book?
And there’s no fucking left page either.
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