Some argue a Kindle book isn't a book. Seems to me that's like arguing clay tablets or illuminated manuscripts aren't books. A vehicle for text and/or image is a book -- at least so far as I am concerned.
Books take us places in our heads that sometimes our bodies cannot go. I gave Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for Christmas to my 9-year-old great-niece. I read aloud the first chapter Christmas night, complete with references to witches, wizards, He Who Cannot Be Named, and parseltongue. Both of us are enchanted by J. K. Rowling's world.
Books also offer us visual pleasures beyond mere words (though words are the vehicles and sometimes pictures are too). A new picture book will be published in February with books within books as its means of narrative. Open This Little Book, written by Jesse Klausmeier and illustrated by Suzy Lee, promises delights for adult as well as child readers. I imagine I shall buy it as soon as it hits the bookstore.
Yes, my Kindle does not have the touch and smell and sound of paper and the press of ink in that paper, and yes my particular Kindle does not offer color, but while I love each of these alone and together, I do not think my head and heart will suffer as I read some literature on the latest version of "book" and other works in the now more traditional and tangible form.
After all, I still write in longhand and on the computer. I haven't noticed that one has killed the other yet. In fact, one has enhanced the pleasures of the other and both have improved my writing.
So, as far as I'm concerned: here's to the Kindle and continued literary innovation!
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