Am in the middle of reading the Goldfinch. I started reading it on holiday so I downloaded it. But while I am enjoying the book, I am finding it difficult to finish. This is puzzling as I am an extremely fast reader and the novel has no lack of narrative pull. It is without question a page turner, and yet without any pages to turn I am finding it very hard to immerse myself in the story. It's partly that the device I am reading it on, an ipad, does so many other things. It is hard to suspend reality when the seductive ping of emails, tweets and other distraction are always there to feed the narcissist within. But I think is something else going on too, words I read on a screen simply do not have the same weight as their printed equivalent. I find one of the features of e readers - the font adjuster, verging on the disrespectful. I feel inhibited by the lack of pages. When I read a book I want to know where I am, a percentage is no substitute for the milestone of page 49. If a book hasnt' caught my attention by p.49 I stop reading...there is no equivalent percentage. I also like to look at the end of a book when I am about half way through - to prepare myself for the worst. This is impossible with an e book. You can only read in one direction.
But the real problem is that words on the screen are ephemeral in a way their printed equivalents are not. When I pick up the goldfinch I have real difficulty in remembering what happened, something that does not happen when I have a real book in my hands.
Perhaps it is just too late for me to adapt, but my 13 year old daughter is the same - she will always choose the physical book over its e equivalent.
' I like to feel how heavy it is, Mum.'Weight doesn't come from words alone