Until recently, I was an ebook sceptic, see; one of those people who harrumphs about the “physical pleasure of turning actual pages” and how ebook will “never replace the real thing”. Then I was given a Kindle as a present. That shut me up. Stock complaints about the inherent pleasure of ye olde format are bandied about whenever some new upstart invention comes along. Each moan is nothing more than a little foetus of nostalgia jerking in your gut. First they said CDs were no match for vinyl. Then they said MP3s were no match for CDs. Now they say streaming music services are no match for MP3s. They’re only happy looking in the rear-view mirror.
Growing up in the digital age, I'm expected to embrace all forms of modern technology with blissful ignorance. Books were always one of few escapes from this, because reading a book means not having to look at another damned glowing screen - which is why, no matter how "convenient" or "enhanced" digital enthusiasts claim that Ebooks are, I'll never see them as real books. They're just files of binary data, and while they might be considered books by a large amount of people, Ebooks have lost the human quality that real books have. You can argue that this is pretentious or stupid or nostalgic, but ultimately what will you pass down to your children and grandchildren? A broken old Kindle device with the same files that millions of other people have, or the dog-eared paperbacks that you fell in love with and wrote your name in and got signed by the author and flipped through in the bookstore and kept with you for years, like an old friend?
Vincent knew he was dying. A horrendous fever overwhelmed him with intolerable pain throughout many sleepless hours. It came as a result of a malaria epidemic that erupted in his hometown during early nineteenth century Europe. The disease spread so fast, physicians had to ration their stocks of quinine only to use it on patients who weren’t declared “hopeless”. Vincent was one of the unlucky ones. Speculating his time on Earth may be short, he requested spiritual guidance, even if he wasn’t a faithful man, nor did he believe in forgiveness. He appealed to the Church as a “just in case” like many other petrified atheists.
Kayla,' I exclaim. 'There may be bad police officers out there, but I can assure you that there will be no harm towards you or anyone else. Like I said before, a policeman's job is to protect people. And if they can't, that's an issue for the officer. But for now, don't worry about it.
Here’s what happens when a single mom meets New York City’s hottest fireman…“Then…seductively…as if he received instruction not from the FDNY’s training school but at Chippendale’s…he slowly inches each suspender off his bare shoulders.”“You must know that exhilarating feeling of a man’s body on top of yours, all that power and muscle pressing you into the bed, the glorious taste of his tongue in your mouth, the manly scent that washes over you and makes you want to melt underneath him.”“Let’s not forget about his nine inches of shapely fireman hose dangling so close in front of my face the scent launches me into a blissful fever.”“Every place he touches contradicts his chosen profession, because instead of putting out a fire he surely starts one.”“I’m so darn helpless in the arms of this powerful, young, ripped personification of New York’s Bravest that I feel myself about to erupt in the most earth shattering explosion since Mount Vesuvius last announced her presence.”“I wonder if he could be enticed to show us a few maneuvers on the brass pole.”“He orchestrates his own personal opera, inspiring high notes with kisses and licks along my elongated nipples, and deep moans with hands that caress my belly.”“We are drawn uncontrollably to each other and have no power to resist, only the tremendous desire to experience everything in its most intense form.
Marriage is not easy, I thought to myself. It’s not supposed to be easy. It’s two different people, from two different backgrounds, trying to build a life together for better or worse. It’s something you have to work at every single day. There are going to be hard times and those are the times you are supposed to fight like hell.
Emotion is ‘recognition’. When treasured moments are identified in the jungle of our personal history during a visual or aural encounter, we capture magic sparks from our past, arousing flashes of insight and revealing an inner flare. These instants of recognition may kindle enthralling emotion and fulfilling inspiration. (“Those journeys of love”)
Is this Jimmy Redstone?” the male voice at the other end of the line inquired. I couldn’t identify the voice. I didn’t recognize the number and the used car salesman tone didn’t do anything to reduce my annoyance at being interrupted during breakfast. “Who the hell you think would be answering his phone?” I snarled.
I wrote this book to show you that a cure is entirely possible because I've seen it happen over and over again.
Just as television didn't put an end to radio or the movies (to say nothing of books), I don't think e-books will put an end to hard copies, even for someone like me who loves technology and does not fetishize the physical medium of books. ~ Steven Pinker, author of The Lauguage Instinct, How the Mind Works The Blank Slate and The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature.
RE: Kindle, iPad, et cetera: For a researcher, these new ways of accessing information are just extraordinary. I thing it introduces the possibility of a new standard of cognitive exactness and precision. ~ Rebecca Goldstein, author of Properties of Light: A Novel of Love, Betrayal and Quantum Physics.
I guess you can call me "old fashioned". I prefer the book with the pages that you can actually turn. Sure, I may have to lick the tip of my fingers so that the pages don't stick together when I'm enraptured in a story that I can't wait to get to the next page. But nothing beats the sound that an actual, physical book makes when you first crack it open or the smell of new, fresh printed words on the creamy white paper of a page turner.