Ellen Lupton, author of Thinking With Type (interviewed by me here), interviews graphic designer David Barringer about his new collection of essays There’s Nothing Funny About Design over at Design Observer today.
It’s a wide ranging interview — mostly about design unsurprisingly — but a couple of paragraphs about books caught my eye:
I do think that ebooks are a step backwards, however. It’s like the fax. It’s not flexible or useful enough. Handheld computers should have greater power, and the Kindle instead has less. You should be able to access encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other searchable resources, just like we can on the computer or the iPhone. That’s where the real benefit of portable handheld units are. Who cares about downloading Twilight? I care about having access to entire online libraries of reference works, maps, and encyclopedias.
I’ve sort of come to the same conclusion. If e-readers are less convenient than cell phones, less useful than laptops, and less durable than books, what’s the point?
Anyway, David Barringer goes on to discuss our enduring emotional connection with book-books:
I’ve seen many friends who are avid readers turn toward their shelves of books and regard them as they would a photo album of their own lives. We take the contents of books into our imaginations, and our personalities are influenced by them. Looking at the books on my shelves, I feel memories bloom, my own life come back to me. Books are triggers for remembering where we have been, and who we are. A book is like a body part, and when you die and your connection to the book is broken, the book dies a little, too.
I thought that was rather touching…
(NB Full Disclosure: Thinking With Type and There’s Nothing Funny About Design are published by Princeton Architectural Press, who are distributed in Canada by my employer, Raincoast Books)