What are you reading?

 

Here a book, there a book, everywhere a book book.

On a shelf.  Stuffed full, spilling over with pages.

Stacked in closets. Next to bedsides. In cabinets and cupboards.

On a computer. In an app. On a phone.

Books, digital and paper, everywhere.

I love books - both reading and simply books themselves, keepers of information to grow brain bumps with, fantastical tales to get lost in, both the familiar and the foreign.

The words of Chris Pavone's first novel, The Expats have whisked me off to Europe this month. I read it with the From Left to Write book club and shared my response inspired by the book earlier this week. It's a thriller filled with a husband and wife wading through, running from, living their secrets.

 The Hunger Games.  Who hasn't read this one by now?!  That would be me!  At least, not all the way through.  I couldn't get into it and put it down pretty early on.  A Target receipt playing the role of a bookmark has rested on page 43 for the last year.  I am refusing to see the first movie until I read the book though and with the second one, Catching Fire coming out next fall, I pulled it out to get back to reading.  Really hope I catch the Hunger Games bug that infected so many others.

I'm about to dive into is a collaboration by one of my favorite thriller writers, James Rollins and new to me, Rebecca Cantrell.  The Blood Gospel is a blend of thriller, mystery, and horror.  I don't read horror.  I don't even watch horror movies.  So, needless to say, this isn't exactly a genre I would naturally gravitate towards.  Rollins is what sold me on trying it.  So, I read City of Screams, a short story eBook also co-authored by the same two writers that sets up The Blood Gospel late last year in order to give this a shot.

The Taker by Alma Katsu has been waiting more than patiently for me to pick her back up.  I was fortunate to win a copy during a From Left to Write Twitter party and enjoyed tweeting and chatting with the author.  The cover is gorgeous and Alma was kind enough to sign it.  Once again, this is a genre I haven't read much in.  But, I'm enjoying stalking words from books and in new to me genres, opening my eyes to so many other worlds, proving our imaginations are our only limitations.

As bookstores continue to disappear (ack!), I have found a way to compensate by using the samples available for download and reading a little bit from the inside pages to decide what book I'm interested in, which words speak to me most - much like I would inside a book store. (Don't worry, I still haunt bookstores too!)  Currently, I have several different books on Buddhism, Zen, and Romanian Gypsies in my e-reader app, looking at their samples to see which ones need to come home with me, either with paper pages or digital words.

What are you reading?  What's waiting in the wings, hoping to be your next read?  Are you a die hard paper bound book fan?  And exclusive eBook reader?  Or do you, like me, enjoy a harmony of both mediums?

 

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Wait! Am I reading an ebook or a bound book?!

Crack open a new book; feel the spine crunch as its insides fan apart, its outside backbends for the first time.  Inhale fresh, crisp unread pages.  Hold a treasure that promises to whisk you to another space.  Heaven.

From my first book read at age three to more than half of my thirties that was how I experienced a book - save the "new" part as while my home overflows with bound books, I've also checked out thousands of cherished-by-many books from libraries across the country.

Enter the last year, a Kindle app for my laptop, and my new friend, Droid - the smartphone that never seems to leave my side now - with its own Kindle app to read by.  And the ebooks that I never thought I'd be interested in have wriggled their way not only into my library, but the very manner in which I read.

I realized this last bit late last night while reading my newest bound book, Bloodline, and I actually pressed my finger on a word on the page.  I mean really pressed it!  Why?  I didn't know what the word meant and was looking for the instant dictionary lookup that's ever so convienent when reading an ebook.  Yes, it was quite late, but it struck me how automatic of a response it was to an unknown word.

And in an instant I was torn between my old, ever constant love of traditional bound, paper pages in hand books and the new fancy schmancy, take with you wherever you go, easy to look up a word and continue reading ebooks.  Not only was I torn, but I felt like I was cheating....on both of them!

Ink stained fingers from newsprinted papers were cast aside as clandestine affairs with news aggregates across the interwebs ensued.  Multi-volume back breaking encyclopedias were left to dusty corners of a library as I embraced Google, who I would gladly smooch every single day.  Dictionaries disappeared off shelves and shattering, though predictable, news broke that the Oxford English dictionary would no longer be printed.

Admittedly, I don't think I've cracked open a paper bound dictionary in about fifteen years.  But, in the late hour my eyes were travelling along James Rollins' words on the pages of my printed edition of his latest Sigma thriller, I suddenly became all too aware of just how differently I access information today.

What about you?  Are you waving your arms in welcome, rolling out the red carpet for the next newest way to access information?  Or do you wave your arms wildly, sending the newest tech down the road?

I hope my world holds both.  I hope I'm inviting it in with arms wide and yet choosing to cherrish the trinkets of yesterday that I wish to never loose interest in; like my long standing bound book love affair.  May there always be rooms full of beloved bound books waiting to be read, thumbed through, and passed on to the next generation to get lost in.


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Affiliate links are used, though this post is not sponsored or solicited.  It's an honest response in reaction to finding myself trying to push tech onto my newly purchased old school paper bound book last night.