Books are Eternal

I love reading. When I was a cute little kid on Kindergarten,

I always go to the library after school and spend a couple of hours there just reading stories and browsing through the myths and fables section. I always feel so elated just opening these books, looking at the pictures and reading the stories, imagining myself as the evil fairy setting fire on the house of the stupid damsels in distress..

But because I am too absorbed with the books I am reading, I was always left behind by my school service because the driver couldn’t find me and I usually end up being picked-up by my mom. (One day I will hunt you down Manong driver for leaving little-Vianne at that time, you just wait…)

Throughout my elementary, high school and college days, I never abandoned my love for reading.

When I was on high school, the bonding moments me and my younger sister share are conducted at the nearest National Bookstore, reading books and escaping the heat at home. After we had our lunch, we would ask money from our parents and ride a tricycle to go to the mall and go straight to NBS.

We would then get the opened books that we wanted (we swear we are not those kids who opens the covered books when the warning says “Do not open books”) and find a comfortable carpet to sit on. After reading for about 3-4 hours, I was usually the one who tells my sister that we need to get home but would always end up in a fight because she doesn’t want to go home yet and she’s still not finished reading her manga… that little brat.

Nowadays, even though books are still available, E-BOOKS have also been really popular. According to Wikipedia,

An e-book (short for electronic book and also known as a digital book, ebook, and eBook) is an e-text that forms the digital media equivalent of a conventional printed book, sometimes restricted with a digital rights management system.

There are a lot of advantages in using them. Ebooks are

a.) cheap - I do not want to deal with the digitals right management issues but lets face it, there are ALOT of ebooks freely available on the internet. They can either be directly downloaded from links or they can be downloaded using torrent without paying any cent.

b.) convenient - If you want this specific book that a friend has recommended and when you went to your favorite bookstore, they are not available, just search the net and tada!

c.) easy to carry – If you want to have the Harry Potter series as well as the Percy Jackson books, just put them in your laptop, ebook reader, iPad, cellphone etc. and you can already bring them everywhere without the hassle of lugging around those heavy books.

Honestly, I also LOVE ebooks. I think I have 200+ ebooks on my hard drive with different authors and in different genres. From sci-fi to horror, love stories and inspirational.

But even if I have all these ebooks, I can say that NOTHING BEATS THE TRADITIONAL.

For me these are the reasons why:

a.) Flipping the page I don’t know why but I just have this feeling of getting more satisfaction on reading a page and flipping it to get to the next page rather than just clicking the scrollbar. It feels like “HA! next page!!! woot~”

b.) Bookmarks In ebook readers if you want to bookmark a page, you double click here and there to get it done.

In traditional books, you even get to use your favorite bookmarks. You either buy a nice simple bookmark with your star sign in them (Taurus – You are brooding emotion incarnate. One minute you’re up, the next you’re down…) or you can even make your own! (Mine has a topless Kim Jaejoong in it.)

c.) Carrying Although they say that it is one of the disadvantage of having a book, I think it is a bit fun it is your favorite novel. I think the fun in there is the act of flaunting to everyone your favorite book without actually talking about it. For example, when I was on my 4th year in High School and I was carrying my friend’s hardbound Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince book. At that time, the book was just release after 2 weeks so people who have read it are anxious to talk about the story to other people. I actually had some strangers come up to me and we squealed *ehem* talked about the book and its characters.

d.) Accessible If you want to read an ebook, you need to turn on your PC or laptop or iPad and wait for it to open. But that is a bit problematic for me since I am the type of person who sits around and whenever my mind drift towards the book that I have just read few days ago, I’d want to open them again just to read a certain part and enjoy that paragraph or sentence. I am usually not patient enough to open the PC, scroll, and read that part then turn off the PC. I usually just want to open the book, flip it, laugh, close the book and open it again anytime I want.

e.) Display You cannot display ebooks because they are just stored in your PC or any ebook reader. But when I have a set of books or series of books displayed on our shelf I just have this feeling of happiness just by looking at them. You know that feeling when a parent looks at her children full of pride? HAHA. Just like that, because I get to think “HA! Those are my books! My COLLECTION! I have read them MWAHAHA” or something in that sense.

Although my reasons seem shallow with these simple pleasures I experience having my traditional books, I am sure that even after 50 years and I am still alive and kicking, even if people already have flying cars or we already live in Mars and ebooks are already the “hottest thang” I think I’ll be the little grandma who goes into a museum and devotedly reads the good ol’ traditional books.