Yes, reading is reading and story is story. However, there is a deep sensual pleasure to having a physical book in hand that adds to the reading experience. Much in the same vein a great reader will add or a bad reader will subtract from the audiobook experience. The “containers” for ebooks don’t have the same added sensual experiences avialable (scent/touch/sound). There are other factors which make ebooks popular with some people. Those who read erotic romance/erotica like the anonymity of the purchase process. Those who travel a great deal, like that they only have to carry one device instead of 10-12 books. Those who like to explore experimental/cutting edge stories may find the only way to get that kind of story would be from an electronic small press publisher as the risk is not as great for them as it would be for a NY publisher if a print small press doesn’t already specialize in the story type. As someone who reads ebooks and has friends who are published in the electronic format, I have grown to appreciate the advantages and the disadvantages of the “container”.

Anyway, those are my random thoughts on the topic :)

But for the sake of this discussion, I just won’t go there. Ah, the good old days, when my days were stuffed full of such useful discussions. ;)

I’m finding these discussions incredibly interesting. In our crazy, roundabout way, we’ve gone from “increasing comfort with technology is increasingly good” to “wait, books are bad?” to “what is a book and by what process can that format change” to “yes, reading is reading.” What fun. I think we’ve argued ourselves down to a first principle of some sort, but it has nothing to do with where we started. :)

By the way, once David stated that he is talking about “story,” I readily agreed that “story is story” and “reading is reading (ala Iris).

Thank all for the conversation! :)

“Authors, publishers, and genres make a difference to books just as composers, performers, studios, and genres do to music.”

Exactly! I agree. They make a difference to the music (loosely speaking) or the content of the music, if you will (got to be a better word than content), just as those people and things to for books. Yes, in both cases these things can affect the actual physical carrier, but more likely and far more often they affect the content.

I am not sure what David is getting at with his 1st line. But it is the content of books that are read.

Again, I do agree that in a loose sense we can (and do) speak of the content of books as books. We do say “I read a book.” But this is generally shorthand for what we really intend to convey. Sometimes it is all we mean to convey.

You may say that you listened to some lovely music and that may be all that needs to be said in that context. What kind of music or by whom or even recorded vs. live may be unnecessary to the context or the message you intend to convey.

I am not against these uses of these words, when appropriate. I use them this way, too. My concern is when we are (or should be, IMO) talking in a more detailed way, e.g. as professionals, we need to be more explicit. Relying on the less meaningful sense of a word when we should mean something more specific is a problem.

I don’t think I quite agree that “music” is a “container word” any more than “book” is, though, Mark. Authors, publishers, and genres make a difference to books just as composers, performers, studios, and genres do to music. But I love the idea of bringing in spoken vs written language. That’s a layer I hadn’t thought about before. I’ll have to think on it more before I have specific thoughts, though.

And Dave. I’m not quite sure I understand your comments. Music is meant to be heard, yes… and you can hear live and recorded music, yes. Art is meant to be seen, okay… but as I pointed out, you see different things when you look at original vs digital Van Gogh. And I would argue that reading happens differently online and off. Sure, the words all mean the same things in the two formats, but maybe I’m the only one whose eyes skip around the page as I read? That’s possible. I’ve never read using somebody else’s eyes and brain. So I guess what I’m saying is, I really want to understand your comment because I think I missed the point, and I think the point may be important.

Oh, and “Yay for comments!!!!” This is the kind of thing that makes blogging worth it for me. :)

Music – meant to be heard

Art – meant to be seen

Books (novels, etc) – meant to be read

Poetry – that one’s slightly different, since it’s cool in both written and performance settings….

Just some thoughts…