Many years ago, when I was sharing a flat, my flatmate got himself a gig as part of a crew to sail a yacht from Sydney to the Philippines.

Before he set out, he asked if he could borrow one of my books to take with him and could I recommend something. I gave him Paul Theroux’s “Happy Isles of Oceania”, and off he went.

And, a few weeks later, back he came. As did my book. A little the worse for wear, dog-eared cover, broken spine, pages yellowed from exposure to the elements, smelling of the sea, of salt, you wouldn’t pay fifty cents for this book from a market stall.

I didn’t mind. I didn’t mind at all. It was still in one piece. It could still be read. It was still a “book”. And back on the shelf it went. With all the other books.

A backpacker who stayed at that flat a few months, he’d been hauling himself around the world for the better part of a year and along for the ride with him was a much battered and tatty copy of “War & Peace”, held together by a couple rubber bands. It too could still be read. It too was still a “book”.

Try this …

Take a book, an old paperback that doesn’t mean much and throw it up against a wall. Grab it with both hands and slam it down on a table. Drop it from a 5th floor balcony onto the sidewalk* below.

It’s still a book. If the pages fall out, they’re numbered, put them back where they belong and wrap a rubber band around the covers to keep them in place. It’s still a book. It can still be read.

Now try doing that with a Kindle.

Whenever I hear or read about some new gadget that’s supposed to be paving the way to a Brave New World or reinventing a perfectly good wheel, I’m always reminded of this brief speech from Mike Leigh’s 1993 film, “Naked”, spoken by the main character, Johnny (David Thewlis) …

“That’s the trouble with everybody – you’re all so bored. You’ve had nature explained to you and you’re bored with it, you’ve had the living body explained to you and you’re bored with it, you’ve had the universe explained to you and you’re bored with it, so now you want cheap thrills and plenty of them, and it doesn’t matter how tawdry or vacuous they are as long as it’s new as long as it’s new, as long as it flashes and fuckin’ bleeps in forty fuckin’ different colors.”

Here is a book I own. Here is another.

Even these books, large format though they are, cannot convey the staggering impact of Salgado’s work when seen full-size, at a gallery. But on a Kindle? Give it up.

I am not a Luddite.

But the book, as it is now, is an astonishing piece of technology. All you need to effect communication with a book is yourself and it. No charger, no battery, no plugs or passwords to access it. Just you and it.

A Kindle is a device for which you pay several hundred dollars, and for the price, this device will allow you to … read a book. A book for which you have also paid money.

B’doi, b’der.

I’m sure the Kindle and other readers of its type will find their niche. The secondary and tertiary educational market, for example. Periodicals, newspapers, academic journals and texts, and long out-of-print barely-noticed-when-they-were-in-print obscurities would be well served by this new format. Things that most people (excepting crazy old cat ladies) wouldn’t be much inclined to keep on a shelf once they’ve fulfilled their purpose.

And porn. For the articles, of course.

At the recent launch of the University of Adelaide Press, J.M. Coetzee had this (PDF) to say …

“ … We have arrived at a real crisis in academic publishing. University presses are going to dwindle and in many cases fold unless they turn to the cheaper option of electronic publishing. Similarly, for scholars in the humanities and social sciences, particularly scholars at the beginning of their career, the choice is more and more going to be between putting out the books they write in electronic format or not publishing in book form at all.”

He makes a fine point and a great deal of sense.

But for those of us who read for pleasure, I can’t quite see the advantage of a Kindle or any other type of electronic reader over a simple book. Is it necessary? Must we be forever told that every thing we accumulate over the course of our lives, books, movies, music, be held in one place on one thing and that this is a good thing and desirable?

I quite like having shelves at home with lots of these things on them. I quite like visiting friends who have shelves in their homes with things like these on them. It beats staring at a bunch of vases.

Like I said, I’m not a Luddite. I enjoy technology and what it brings as far as information, news, entertainment are concerned. And even though the internet harbours many things that are truly horrific in nature and often quite deranged, as far as I’m concerned, the good of it far outweighs the bad.

But I won’t be rushing out anytime soon to buy a Kindle or an eReader, no matter how breathlessly they get hyped. I don’t want my books to “flash and fuckin’ bleep in forty fuckin’ different colors” at me.

I’d rather just pick one off a shelf and read it.

* American expression for “footpath”. Tough shit, pedantic language Nazis.