The Nook or a Book



My Book Shelf

I have lots of books in my condo, and I USE TO love to look at them and touch them. I have multiple copies of some of my all time favorite books like Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. I even have quite a few autographed copies. I USE TO spend a lot of time making sure that they were alphabetized by the authors' last name, and I would dust them at least once a week. Overtime, things changed: Digital Readers Emerged On the Scene.




The Nook

When the digital reader first came out, I couldn't image reading from anything except a hard or paperback book. I am not sure what inspired me, but around the time of the big DC Snow Storm of 2009, I ordered the Nook by Barnes and Nobel.

My Nook came right before everything in DC came to a screeching halt because of the snowstorm, and I was sort of stuck in. I was sort of stuck in, because I live in a pedestrian friendly neighborhood, and my neighbors and I did a lot of walking to the neighborhood restaurant and bars that somehow managed to open during the blizzard.

Like I stated before, I got the Nook right before the storm, and I started reading Standing at the Scratch Line by Guy Johnson, the son of the renown author, Maya Angelou. By the way, Standing at the Scratch line is a really fascinating read, the main character is an African American bad ass in a sort of positive way. Reading this  novel on the Nook, I had a complete paradigm shift: I absolutely loved reading digitally. WOW! Some of the advantages of reading digitally are that the words can be changed to any size that you like and no more flipping pages.

Another great advantage to reading digitally is that you can download books no matter where you are, and the books will be on your digital reader within seconds. Case in point, on one of my DC excursions, I was at the National Portrait Gallery to hear a talk by Andrew Young, the former Mayor of Atlanta. He mentioned two books that really inspired him: The Third Jesus by Deepak Chopra and No Future Without Forgiveness by Desmond Tutu.  While he was doing his talk, I was able to download both books, and they were instantly delivered to my nook. I now always have books that are waiting for me to read, and I very seldom every have to go to a book store, a place that I USE TO love.

Andrew Young and Me

The place that I hardly ever go anymore :(

Now, don't get me wrong, I am not a completely digital reader. As stated in another blog, I keep The Best of Simple, in book form, by my bed, and I read from it periodically so that I can remember "the good old days" of books. I also still have books on my shelves. They don't get as much love and care as they use too, but I still have them.

I can't say which digital reader is the best, because I have only tried the Nook, and it was LOVE AT FIRST READ :)  People, what are your thoughts on this huge shift in the literary world?