Wednesday, August 10, 2011

A Book vs. A Nook

I'm spending the week at my family's beach house up in Maine.  If any of you have been to Maine before you have a good idea of what the weather is like - cold and rainy.  Being the last-minute packer that I am, I completely forgot to go to the library to pick up some random books to read this week in preparation for the rainy weather.  However, this gives me the opportunity to explore my grandparents' beach house for books to read.

My cousins are here too and they all planned ahead and had books to read.  Well actually, most of them have Kindles or Nooks, not books.  I've never really liked the idea of eBooks because I loved being able to hold a book in my hand and flip through the pages.  I do, however, agree that having a Nook or a Kindle is great when you're going on vacation for a while and want to bring lots of books but not necessarily all of that weight.  Or if you're trying to read your book on the beach and it's windy and you get sand stuck in the binding.  Or if you have kids and you download them one of those interactive books so they can play along with the story.  But that just completely destroys creating the story in your own mind, which was always my favorite part of reading.  And honestly, I cannot see myself spending money to download books when I could just go to the library and rent them for free.  Do the Kindles and Nooks even have a library like that?  Alright, back to exploring the house...

Look at how thick these pages are!
The edges weren't even cut evenly.
It's a rainy day and there's not too much to do with all of the cousins out and my brother still asleep.  I meandered around the bedrooms and the television room and found this fantastic book about Salem witches.  I carefully cracked open the book and looked at the printed date.  1908!  This book was over 100 years old.  Impossible, right?  But that's what the cover says.  I started reading the book written in Olde English and was immediately enraptured by this story of a young girl who ran into a man in the forest and told him about how she was made to stand in the public square because she wore a silk dress and the Puritans are not allowed to indulge in such frivolous things.  They talked of witches and the man asked her to give "the Cavalier" a message about black powder and the little girl ran off before the sun set so she wouldn't be abducted by witches or wizards and convinced to partake in black magic.  Oh and she was a teacher at a Dame School (a school where only women were allowed to teach).  I loved the sound of the binding crackling as I turned the thick pages between my fingers.  The pages were stained and smelled of the attic.  There is nothing like rifling through those old pages in the dark back room of the cabin while listening to rain fall on the roof.  Honestly, how could a Kindle or a Nook even compare?

Also, please excuse the quality of the photos - I forgot my camera cord and I wanted to get one or two posts in while I'm on vacation.  Don't want to leave you all hanging :)

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments may take a little while to show up, but don't worry they'll be there. Thanks for taking the time to comment, I read and appreciate every one!