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http://www.nytimes.co m/2014/01/05/bo o ks/review/ho w-do -e-bo o ks-change-the-reading-experience.html?
nl=to daysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20140103&_r=0&pagewanted=print

How Do E-Books Change the Reading Experience?

By MOHSIN HAMID and ANNA HOLMES

Each week in Bookends, two writers take on questions about the world of books. T his week, Mohsin Hamid
and Anna Holmes discuss how technology af f ects the way we read.

By Mohsin Hamid

In a world of intrusive technology, we must engage in a kind of struggle if we wish to sustain moments of solitude.

Illus t ra t io n by R. Kikuo J o hns o n

T he advantages of e-books are clear. E-books are immediate. Sitting at home

in Pakistan, I can read an intriguing review of a book, one not yet in stores
here, and with the click of a button be reading that book in an instant. E-books
are also incorporeal. While traveling, which I do f requently, I can bring along
several volumes, weightless and indeed without volume, thereby enabling me
to pack only a carry-on bag.

And yet the experience of reading e-books is not always satisf actory. Yes, it is
possible to vary the size of the f ont, newly important to me at age 42, as I
begin to perceive my eye muscles weakening. Yes, e-books can be read in the
dark, self -illuminated, a reassuring f eature when my wif e is asleep and I am too lazy to leave
Mo hs in Hamid
our bed, or when electricity outages in Lahore have persisted f or so long that our backup
batteries are depleted. And yes, they of f er more f requent indicators of progress, their click-
f orwards arriving at a rapidity that f ar exceeds that of paper-f lipping, because pixelated screens tend to hold
less data than printed pages and f urthermore advance singly, not in two-sided pairs.

Nonetheless, of ten I pref er reading to e-reading. Or rather, given that the dominance of paper can no longer be
assumed, p-reading to e-.

I think my reasons are related to the f act that I have disabled the browser on my mobile phone. I haven’t
deleted it. Instead, I’ve used the restrictions f eature in my phone’s operating system to hide the browser,
requiring me to enter a code to expose and enable it. I can use the browser when I f ind it necessary to browse.
But, f or the most part, this setting serves as a reminder to question manuf actured desires, to resist unless I
have good cause.

Similarly, I have switched my email account f rom the attention- and battery-consuming “push” setting to the
less f renzied manual one. Emails are f etched when I want them to be, which is not all that of ten. And the
browser on my slender f ruit-knif e of a laptop now contains a readout that reminds (or is it warns?) me how
much time I have spent online.

Time is our most precious currency. So it’s signif icant that we are being encouraged, wherever possible, to
think of our attention not as expenditure but as consumption. T his blurring of labor and entertainment f orms
the basis, f or example, of the f inancial alchemy that conjures deca-billion-dollar valuations f or social-
networking companies.
I crave technology, connectivity. But I crave solitude too. As we enter the cyborg era, as we begin the physical
shif t to human-machine hybrid, there will be those who embrace this epochal change, happily swapping cranial
space f or built-in processors. T here will be others who reject the new ways entirely, perhaps even waging holy
war against them, with little chance — in the f ace of drones that operate autonomously while unconcerned
shareholding populations post self ies and status updates — of success. And there will be people like me, with
our powered exoskeletons lef t of ten in the closet, able to leap over buildings when the mood strikes us, but
also prone to wandering naked and f eeling the sand of a beach between our puny toes.

In a world of intrusive technology, we must engage in a kind of struggle if we wish to sustain moments of
solitude. E-reading opens the door to distraction. It invites connectivity and clicking and purchasing. T he closed
network of a printed book, on the other hand, seems to of f er greater serenity. It harks back to a pre-jacked-in
age. Cloth, paper, ink: For these read helmet, cuirass, shield. T hey af f ord a degree of protection and make
possible a less intermediated, less f ractured experience. T hey guard our aloneness. T hat is why I love them,
and why I read printed books still.

Mohsin Hamid is the author of three novels: “Moth Smoke,” a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award; “The
Reluctant Fundamentalist,” a New York Times best seller that was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and
adapted for film; and, most recently, “How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia.”

◆◆◆

By Anna Holmes

Who or what we choose to read can be as telling as the clothes we wear, and an e-book feels like a detail
withheld, a secret kept.

Illus t ra t io n by R. Kikuo J o hns o n

When my second book was released this past October, I told anyone who
would listen not to buy the electronic version.

T his was not so much a dig at the publishing house production managers who
converted my creation into e-book f orm as it was an acknowledgment of the
medium’s many limitations. You see, no matter how f ancy the ref inements
made to, say, Apple’s much heralded Retina display or Amazon’s electronic ink,
an e-book of f ers little promise of discovery or wonder. Browsers may be
ubiquitous in our e-portal age, but an e-book doesn’t encourage actual
browsing.
Anna Ho lme s
T his isn’t to say that I don’t read e-books. I do. (Mostly f or research — love that search
f unction!) But af ter close to half a decade of downloading and consuming any number of
novels, autobiographies, comics and self -help titles in Kindle f orm, I have yet to f eel as f ully invested in the
pixels on a Bezos-imagined screen as I do in the indelible glyphs f ound on good old-f ashioned book paper.

Part of this has to do, of course, with the ways in which e-books are bundled with or experienced alongside
other f orms of entertainment. My iPad, f or example, of f ers an experience not only with the written word, via
the iBooks and Kindle apps, but with the moving picture, be it Netf lix, Angry Birds or the mesmerizing Google
Earth. Deep engagement with an e-book can theref ore be quite challenging: It’s dif f icult to stay present with
Colum McCann’s latest of f ering when the prose is competing f or cognitive space with archived episodes of
“Scandal.”
Interf ace is another issue. I pref er static page numbers over percentages. (I am not exaggerating when I say
that the mutability of the progress bar at the bottom of every Kindle screen f ills me with a specif ic and highly
toxic combination of disorientation, obligation and dread.) Besides, physical, paperbound books provide a
sense memory that has inf ormed so many of my most important encounters with storytelling: sight, smell and
touch, yes, but also the experience of anticipation, progress and accomplishment. Not to mention recollection.
To call to mind a certain Toni Morrison book has as much to do with the care she took in craf ting it as the
physical sensation of reading it. Twenty-f ive years af ter I f irst read “Song of Solomon,” I still remember the
exact location of a particularly devastating, gorgeous passage about the emotional violence inf licted by Macon
Dead on his wif e and daughters. (It was situated toward the beginning of the novel, at the bottom of a lef t-
f acing page.)

Lastly, I f eel a certain disappointment in the electronic f ormat’s perf ormative limitations. Anyone who owns and
enjoys books understands that the volumes we keep on our shelves — and in our hands on a busy subway —
tell several stories. T here’s the author’s story, which is the actual text; there’s the publisher’s story, which has
to do with the choice of f ormat and design; and, f inally, there’s the reader’s story — what a particular book
telegraphs about one’s education and tastes. Who or what we choose to read can be as telling as the clothes
we wear, and an e-book f eels like a detail withheld, even a secret kept. (T his is not necessarily a bad thing, and
it probably explains why the three books I own about dealing with a loved one’s alcoholism are on my Kindle,
not my bookshelf .) Unlike the shopworn cover of an early paperback edition of “Native Son” or the crisp jacket
on the latest Donna Tartt, Kindles and Nooks tell others little to nothing about their owners, except that they
enjoy a certain amount of disposable income.

At the very least, physical books provide a convenient and visible distraction: What else are wallf lowers at
pretentious cocktail parties supposed to busy themselves with? Oh, right: their iPhones.

Anna Holmes has written for numerous publications, including The Washington Post, Salon, Harper’s, Newsweek,
Sports Illustrated and The New Yorker online. A 2012 recipient of the Mirror Award for Commentary, presented by
Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Journalism, she is the editor of two books: “Hell Hath No Fury:
Women’s Letters From the End of the Affair”; and “The Book of Jezebel,” based on the popular women’s Web site
she created in 2007.