I love the smell of paperbacks in the morning.

I think a lot about books.  There were always books, from my earliest memory.  I can thank my parents for that.  My mother's reading habits and my dad's willingness to drive me to the library in the next town every Saturday morning.
 Yesterday I took a day off for much needed rest.  Surrounding me on the bed were my laptop, my Kindle, a paper copy of "The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland" - a kind and timely gift sent from Michaela in Germany. And, of course, the ever changing plethora of cats.

  I hear a lot of discussions about how sad it is that paper books are going away.  Of course they are.  Paper is going away --or at least its widespread use.  I don't have a problem with that, short of a little nostalgia.  This is the information age after all, and I love it.  I have a library that fits into my purse, windows into the world in my house.  Any question I have can be answered in the time it takes to ask it.

  Everything has a price.  Remember beautiful stationery?  You may not, but I do.  Printed and scented and tied up in pretty boxes.  So exciting to choose the new box.  So thrilling to get a fancy envelope in the mailbox.    But then, once upon a time the sight of a woman's ankle could send a proper man swooning.  (And no, I wasn't alive for that, having grown up in the relative freedom of the 70's.)

  We move on.

 Some of us will  always love paper books. Of course we will.  They are our childhoods. And they likely won't disappear overnight, wiped out by a single cataclysm.  Instead, they will evolve into something else.
They will become artful, valuable and precious.   I expect that in short time the word "book" will replace "electronic book" and "paper book" will replace "book."  Or some such. Time will tell, and less of it than we may think.
I'll do what I can to preserve my small library of precious editions - my Sturgeon, Padgett and Leiber, my Bradbury, Asimov and Ellison.
 
Some argue that reading is going away.  Yes, indeed it is.  Language is changing at a logarithmic pace and videos  replace words and pictures.  This, to me, is a larger concern and another topic.

  But hopefully there will always be those of us who love language.  Writing is an art form.  A sentence so well crafted to give us pause will hold its place as such. Time will choose the classics of every era, including this one. At least I hope for this.  Stories can be read on screens as well as on paper.  In the end, it's the words that matter.

Despite my many faults and missteps, I've done my part as my parents did, in that all of my offspring read for pleasure.  And each of them writes creatively.   I don't have to wonder if they will pass the love of language on.  That's not my concern, but theirs.


  If you're filled with longing for paper books, go to the library or a used book store and breathe deeply.  Look at the light slanting across the stacks, dust motes dancing between.  And don't be sad about books. If you love them, you'll always have them.

Hope your Saturday is inspiring.

--your artist