Give my hands something to hold

The Crafty World of Books
Wherein the sparrow picks up shiny things for show and tell

Yesterday, I briefly attended the Toronto Book Camp, a series of conferences that went on from 9-5, dealing a lot with emerging technology with books, and using an open floor discussion type format. Ideas, fears, and excitement were passed around like sweet sweet currency, and with the advent of the eBook/eReader, the conference had all three things in abundance.

Personally, I am kind of excited about the eReader. I know that, considering I want to get into the book industry - and, most ironically, the production side of it - that supporting a type of media that is 'doomed to destroy the book' seems not the smartest. On the contrary. The final presentation I went
to was called Unleashing Your Inner Reader, and was about how we read and who is reading what. All very intriguing. After only being at the conference for 3 hours, the emerging trend was everyone's total hatred and purist view about eBooks, and the majority voice in this room was no exception.

Believe me, I used to hate them too. I was vehemently infuriated by them. For someone who has a gigantic library, I was outraged at the idea that my entire collection would be an obsolete artifact within ten years - maybe even 5. I loathed the notion of losing the tangibility of my reading experience. I was also not impressed with the pricing war going on as soon as the Kindle came out, knowing that book prices are already compressed enough and publishers are having a hard enough time making ends meat as it is. Typography/photo heavy books would never be able to translate the same either. The medium is way too new to even consider investing in it now, and there are so many typeface fuck ups with the ePub format that the product seems more unappealing the longer I talk.

And so on, and so on.

But here is the flip side: the presenter of the Unleash Your Inner Reader, Marichka Melnyk of CBC Radio, started off by showing us the things she puts in her purse for the long commute to work - Phone, iPod, magazine, book, and finally eReader. This encompasses my point of view entirely; there will always be a desire for that tangibility of the book, of the magazine, of having things on hand in print simply because it is our preference. A book or magazine's battery never runs out - ...because there ISN'T one - and the interface is so easy to understand: words on pages! Yay! However, the eReader was still present. What if there are 5 books you are reading at one time, and you really, REALLY don't want to carry them around with you all day? This is where the eReader comes in. And though yes I am not an iPad fan, imagine what can be done to create the Enhanced Book with that kind of emerging technology.

My point is this: the two are totally different things. I think everyone's reaction is that the eBook is trying to replace the Real Book. I think they are completely separate products that fill different needs (tangibility vs. portability), and the point is that you can choose to have one or the other, or both. I am a book nerd, book collector, book fanatic, book-a-holic. If anything, this entire shift is extremely fascinating, especially hearing all of the varying opinions from people in the industry. What everyone also has to understand is that the eBook is here. It isn't going anywhere. We are all going to have to be flexible and see it for its possibilities, because crying about how you want to hold a book and flip pages isn't going to make it go away. The medium is not the message - but it can take the message further than we thought possible. Human beings began their writing experience on tablets anyway. Now it's all come full circle, oddly enough.

Now that I've expressed that, here's a totally different perspective/topic: the curious crafty things people are doing in the book/writing world which will never be emulated electronically ever, because human beings are epic like that. Enjoy!





Ten Amazing Sculptures Made Out of Type Writers






Hyperactivity Typography! (though digital, I want this in a printed edition)













The epic and fabulous post office art of Bianca Jagoe at Goodnight Little Spoon!




Is this not enough to quench your tangibility thirst? You actually want something in your hands that is a superbly crafted harmony of production values and fine words?

Then you should DEFINITELY attend the Toronto Small Press Book Fair on June 15th! Be there and show your love for the care still taken with books in this face paced digital age!

Lumiere!