Sunday, April 06, 2008

Blog a Book

Blog a book, one book, two or maybe more. Books are for reading and learning. They feel good against your fingers, often rest on your knees and more times than that, a book fits perfect under your arm. Old fashion books with well worn pages darkened by turning and re-reading bring comfort to generation after generation.

Libraries with shelves and shelves of books in buildings across the world that store history and ancient philosophy have been a refuge to many and a haven for tourists. A book is the companion you take on a train or on a flight coast to coast. Hardcover or paperback a book serves to help wile away hours of delays and waiting. Characters in books take you to places you’ve never been and into lives unlike your own. There is a door marked escape which you enter when reading a book. The minute you open the cover you can be swept away.

Alas, technology has infiltrated the world of books. An electronic Deity threatens our library stacks. Mr. Blackberry is courting Miss Kindle and in no time there will be wedding bells and little Kindleberries running around and soon the paperless book will be favored.

What will happen to the legacy of books when books are electronic exclusives and kindled daily? Where will we go to smell the scent of leather bound volumes and read newspapers off wooden rails? Will my blogging a book be a thing of the past? The thought makes me stop and pause.

Belly of the Whale, has just come out in hardcover. I look at it in awe. A hardcover has such presence, such clout, and ages well.

To appreciate the continuing advances of convenience is welcome but at the same time disheartening. Perhaps, in another hundred years a brick building once called a library, built on Main Street USA, will become an electronic word storage tank and folk like me will have become dinosaurs.

Blog what you feel, think, hear and see.

Linda Merlino, author, Belly of the Whale
http://www.lindamerlino.com
http://www.kunati.com/linda-merlino

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