Breathe
By Begoña Sieiro
I refused to own a kindle. Much less did I want to meet any of its peers, if they still exist. I refused, refused, refused, refused, flatly and categorically, to indulge in reading books electronically. I considered it a betrayal to read them in this format; a betrayal to paper, to publishers, to the book itself. To my love for this object that I fell in love with since I was four years old; I am, first and always, a reader. The rest of me, practically everything else, derives from that. I read, therefore I am.
Users of the gadget swore to me that there was nothing more comfortable for travel, for the bag, for waiting rooms or the bus. I watched my fellow readers fall, one by one, and accept, humbly and with a mini-dash of embarrassment, that it had been an excellent purchase. I proudly boasted that I was not like them; that I had enough integrity and willpower to restrain myself from acquiring that hand-sized tablet, in which an entire library could fit.
I thought I was convinced - deluded! - that I would make it.
But I betrayed myself. And I confess, not without a little regret, that I am enjoying the fruit of my betrayal very much. As much as one enjoys on Christmas morning a gift you were expecting but didn't know if you would receive. Until you see something - a color, a typeface, a photo - that confirms that it is, and your heart skips a beat, almost a flip, because you already knew you wanted it, but you hadn't realized how much. It's excitement but guilt but nerves but doubt, all at the same time.
I have a new kindle. I've only had it for a few days and I'm on my third book. The decision to get it was made when I was given about 20 books that I was more than ready to drink up. I felt I wasn't doing the books or the authors or my eyes justice by skimming them on a computer or a 2014 iPad (permanently hijacked by my kids and therefore smeared with candy and gunk alike). I wanted to give a gift to those gifts.
There is one justification that allows me to be at peace with this decision: I will not stop buying physical books. Now I will be able to buy them just because. I will buy them in paper and I will sniff them as I turn the pages quickly, printing them with my thumb to flip through them, sniff them and wave at them, all at the same time. I will treasure all the bibliography of my spoiled authors; poetry books (because reading poetry on a kindle is an insult) and those precious ones with sentences and illustrations. Photo books and those from independent publishers that survive heroically with each copy sold. The ones you see and they call out to you. And, of course, the children's ones.
I have always asserted that books are much more than a story. They are an object that speaks to you and opens a million doors, as trite and commonplace as that may sound. They are the capsule in which the compass of someone like you or me travels, captured in a hundred, a thousand or a million words.
I have to confess something else: I don't just buy books compulsively. I also start them all at the same time and see which one grabs me first, which one grabs me the most. As if I ordered a sushi roll of each type to try them all and decide which one to start the feast with. I have no idea how that behavior will manifest itself with this new artifact, but I'm guessing it won't be much different. I already have about ten fragments formed. There is always at least one book in my bag; I travel with three or four. There's always something I want to read. There's always something I'm reading. I always have a book I'd like to reread. I always have recommendations that I haven't even skimmed. I lack the time to read everything I want to read. And even more for everything we should all be reading. For me literature is a pastime that allows me to live the time. There are sentences in books that get inside and stay with you forever. There are whole books that do as well. My goal has been to find those books and collect them, literally and tangibly, printed and palpable and visible to all. Let them fill my home, my mind and my days.
The kindle was a means to own and suck all those books that did me the favor of adding to my library in a new format, different, but with the same potential capacity to become one of the chosen ones. It was the best way I found to give them their place in my life.
The books didn't leave my life. They doubled.
I now have two guilty pleasures that smile mischievously at me when I hold them in my hands: the kindle with the Amazon smile-arrow and the McDonald's french fries box. Who the hell am I? And at the same time: what a delight to be allowed to break our own old-fashioned rules.
Welcome, kindle, I say quietly to my gadget.
Bachelor's degree in communication with a master's degree in book and magazine publishing. Literature lover with editorial trajectory in several printed media, such as Hoja Santa and Altaïr Magazine. Head over heels for her two kids, she is pro-diversity, reflective and stubborn with regimes. She is a seeker of change and faithful to her thoughts and feelings.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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