WHY READ BOOKS?
When I was a lad the only electronic media we had was the wireless. Incidentally, 'wireless' has an entirely different meaning today. In those days a 'wireless' was a radio that could be listened to without using headphones 'wired' into the set because it had a 'loudspeaker' in other words the radio could talk to you loud enough for you to hear it. There was no TV so if we wanted something different, of our own choosing, we had to read comics or books. It would surprise many young people to learn that many comic books in those days had few, if any, pictures, they were all text. Boy's Own, the Hotspur, the Wizard and the Rover were probably the most popular and as a result of reading them we soon graduated to proper books and made frequent visits to the library.
Contrast this to today's world where the only books that many people ever see are the textbooks they are forced to study as part of their school-work. I am told that even textbooks are becoming redundant as they are replaced by screen based texts and computerised hand-outs. The advent of the Kindle and similar electronic 'books' is eating into the sales of old-fashioned hard copies. The pessimists forecast the death of the book but I don't buy it. Books have so many advantages that while the market might shrink they are here to stay. Of course I would say that wouldn't I, my house is full of books and I really must stop buying new ones! So I think I'd better buckle down and give you my reasons why books are best!
The first and most obvious is the fact that they don't need batteries, never break down and are portable. If, like me, you prefer hardback copies, they are a pleasure to handle particularly if they are designed well, incidentally I like the smell of them as well and you can't get that from a Kindle! If your house walls are lined with them they are good insulation and few things look nicer to a book-lover than shelves full of old favourites. There is also the fact that they advertise your interests when you have a guest. Show me someone's book shelves and I will have a good idea of what interests he or she pursues and at what level. If you are a historian like me you can read books that are so old nobody thinks they are commercial and so they don't get digitised. Try finding Warner's History of the Church in Barnoldswick. There are some modern books which have a limited print run and never see Kindle. I am reading one at the moment, an obscure but fascinating explanation of how slavery has affected taxation in the United States and is the latest thinking in the theory of US history which says that in matters of politics and taxes, the South actually won the Civil War and the effects can be seen today in modern American tax policies. Not everyone's cup of tea but I'm enjoying it in a lovely crisp well-designed hardback with clear text.
There is another important reason why books are so superior to the screen culture. Before anything appears on a screen or in selected passages digitised for educational processes it has to be edited. In other words, someone is deciding what they want you to read. This same process applies to images as well. Think about the news on television. It consists of a series of different images flashed on the screen for such a brief instant that you only have time to take in the point that the editor is trying to convey. You can't sit back and study the image to absorb the context and perhaps see something interesting even if not connected to the main story. When I did the Lancashire Textile Project I was asked why I used old-fashioned black and white photographs of the process I was describing and not video. I pointed out that if you sat the worker down with such an image they could spend up to 45 minutes describing everything in minute detail. This wouldn't have been possible with a screen image which can only give a brief glimpse.
This is where books score every time over the edited image and particularly if there are pictures or maps in the text. You have time to observe and study rather than just seeing and in so doing get far more knowledge from the time you devote to it. As many of you know, I have written twenty books and hundreds of articles about Barnoldswick history, you can find them all in the library. These are only of local interest and will never appear on Kindle unless you really take the trouble to go and look for them and buy the E-book version. However, they are there sat on the shelves and anyone can access them even if they haven't got an electronic reader. Think on, if you are reading this it means you bought the paper so perhaps this means I am preaching to the converted. Any newspaper editor, particularly the local newspapers, will tell you that sales are falling and the long-term prospect for their publications is precarious because there is so much news available online and we are bombarded with it every day on the television. However, note that the small stories about people we know, the things that really interest us, don't appear on national television and if we ever lose our local papers we will lose a valuable strand of our daily lives.
Another great advantage of the book over television is that you can sit with it in complete silence. No distractions so you can apply all your attention to what you are reading. Silence is in very short supply these days but is so good for us. I can think of few greater pleasures than sitting in a warm quiet room in a comfortable chair reading a book. I have a ticking clock and in the absence of any other sound I love the gentle reminder that time is passing. Mind you, not everyone enjoys this. I once met a man who couldn't stand clocks ticking and chiming and often wondered what it was deep in his psyche that caused this. I'll leave the psychological analysis to you!
So my message is join me in my reading and enjoyment of the hard copy! Encourage your children to read books and look after them. To paraphrase an advertising slogan I once saw in the window of a music shop in down-town Manhattan, if your son reads books (blows a horn) he will never blow a safe!
Eye candy!
