I've always loved mysteries. My first exposure to the genre was reading Hardy Boys novels which were equivalent to Harry Potter of the era. I carefully dissected each caper in the hopes of solving the crime before they did. I didn't always succeed. But when I finished each one, there was a sense of accomplishment. So I proudly displayed the completed novel in my bookcase alongside several others so I could easily reference how many books I'd actually read. The goal was to fill up the bookcase and start a new one.
I don't know when the first bookcase came into vogue, but I'm sure if Moses could have made a paperback version of the Ten Commandments it would have started around then. Let's just say it took awhile longer before Ikea made it both commonplace and affordable. But did you ever stop and think why we even needed bookshelves in the first place? If we desired a place to store our best sellers, paperbacks, and text books, why not just shove them into boxes and store them in an attic or basement? If we wanted to get rid of them altogether, Ebay offers cash and a local library offers a tax write-off. But that doesn't work for most people. Because without a bookcase, we can't really prove to anyone that we definitively finished any books beyond Curious George and Dr. Seuss. This, of course assumes that you actually have moved beyond Green Eggs and Ham.
The real truth is that a bookcase holds more than just books. It also holds the key to a few critical psychological components. First, the bookshelf tells the complete story of our lives. It displays the books we were forced to read in high school (with or without accompanying Cliffs Notes). Some feature the college textbooks that we refer back to every now and then. They contain NY Times bestsellers that were made into classic films, books on self-help, leadership, naming a baby, biographies of great historical figures, and saving for retirment. The bookcase lazily leans against the wall, but in the foreground displays our intellectual pursuits over various stages of our adulthood. But like any well developed novel, this only tells half the story.
The second facet of a bookcase is not meant for us at all. It's for the benefit of everyone else. Doctors use them to prove that they actually know something about medicine, or worst comes to worst if dumbfounded, they actually have a refernce tool. And how could lawyers not prove they know something about the law, when the law itself it plastered all over the office in various bookcases? The same rules apply to any home office, den, study, or any other room where books are displayed. If you listen carefully, you could hear every bookcase shout, "Hey you, look what I've read!"
This all brings us to the latest chapter in book display - - the age of digital technology. It began with Amazon's Kindle, was reinforced by Barnes and Nobles' Nook, and seemed to zenith with Apple's new iPad. It's hard to imagine, but could all these high tech gadgets soon make the next generation's bookcase extinct? It's happened before.
The music industry was first to take a hit. Back in the days of the British Invasion, summer beach music, and Classic Rock, artistic album covers were on display in every household. Many of them were worthy of framing. Soon, these collections gave way to much smaller CDs which were stored in less visible racks as the CDs were turned on their sides. And with digital music distribution, any semblance of an album cover has disappeard and replaced by a still image you can't even touch. How could books not be next?
What we're reading has become far less important that how we're reading it. The plot of the latest Grisham novel is not nearly as fun as reading it on the beach in a digital format without any worry of sand getting caught between the pages.
So will our children be the first generation to not use a bookcase? Probably not fully. But with a new group of readers enamored with portability, don't expect to see their bookcases completely filled. It will however, provide a perfect space for a charger that will connect to a wall outlet and insure that our eReaders will always be brightly lit.
As for what we're reading, well, that will remain a mystery.
No comments:
Post a Comment