Screen vs. paper

When we moved to New Hampshire a decade and a half ago, we had to move a substantial library from our old house. Much of it had to wait its turn in our new garage, boxed up until we had the shelf space for them.

We didn’t know that the garage was leaky and would get flooded every time a major thunderstorm hit. A little while later, before we had the opportunity to put up more shelves, a big thunderstorm passed through, and at least a dozen boxes full of books got waterlogged and ruined.

We salvaged the rest and finally had space in the house to put everything on shelves. But at that time, e-readers had really taken off, and I shifted most of my reading to those. The first one was a Sony, followed by a long list of Kindles. Amazing devices, those–they got cheaper and better every year, and I could carry around hundreds of books in my pocket without having to worry about the physical integrity of my library.

A while back, however, I noticed that all the tech I’ve let into the house has changed my reading habits in a major way. I used to have no problem at all sitting down with a good paper book and reading most of the day away. But the longer I used Kindles (or the reader apps on the iPhone and iPad), the less I was able to stay immersed in the material, to the point where I couldn’t read five straight pages without feeling the temptation to check email or messages. It got to a point where I couldn’t remember the last time I had read a book cover to cover without putting it aside in between chapters for days and weeks at a time, or when I had last read a book on paper.

It appears that the diminishing attention span induced by perpetual connectivity is a common thing. (Nicholas Carr’s book The Shallows is excellent, if unsettling, reading on that subject.)

In order to get my brain to undo whatever rewiring all that tech has done to my attention span circuits, I’ve semi-mothballed my Kindle. Now I only use it for traveling, which means that it has been sitting on my nightstand charged and unused for most of the last 14 months. Whenever a new book catches my attention, I buy it in paper form again. I’ve also bought nice hardcover editions of my favorite books, the ones I tend to re-read every few years. And I’ve found that something really works differently in the brain when I sit down with a real book and a cup of tea, with the electronics in a different room instead of buzzing for attention in my pocket. I feel a similar difference whenever I write longhand with a pen instead of typing on a computer keyboard. It’s like the brain shifts to a lower gear, but one that can pull much heavier loads, if that makes sense.

Here’s the latest book haul, which will keep me busy for the next few weeks:

Not only do they hold my attention much better than their e-ink versions, they can also be put on a shelf for display and future use. Sometimes you just don’t know what you want to read until you spot a particular book on the shelf and think, “I should give that one another read.” (Also, they can be signed by the author. I have a whole shelf full of excellent books authored by friends that I managed to get signed at various conventions and get-togethers.)

Of course, if we ever end up moving to a new house, I’ll probably regret this new habit because boxes full of books are really, really heavy.