This is a departure from what I normally post here on A Few Thousand Words, but I hope that you find it informative.
I love reading books on my iPhone.
This is an odd confession considering I love reading an actual, physical book. I like the tactile feel of holding a book and turning the pages.
As a kid, I owned paperbacks. I wanted them to be in pristine condition. When I read, I opened the book to about a 90 degree angle. It was enough to read the words while looking like I was peeking into a room and watching something forbidden. I didn’t want to damage the spine, whose purpose was functionally essential, not aesthetically essential. I didn’t really understand this as I treated each book delicately like a comic book collector handles his comics. Spoiler: I was also a comic book collector.
I loved going to the public library. Books were everywhere! I had grown-up titles and history books that didn’t cater to a sixth grader except when it forced me to have a dictionary close by so I could look up a word. I’d lift them from their slot and take them to my table for a quick perusal before determining if it was worthy of checking out. I remember the first time I went to the New York City Public Library on 5th Avenue in Manhattan. The smell. I felt like I was just inhaling the richness of history into my lungs. There was a certain scent from the aged yet preserved paper that I truly enjoyed. It was like ED meds for nerds like me.
Once I overcame my snobbery, I went to used book stores. On one of our family vacations, we visited my wife’s aunt and grandmother in Connecticut. They took us to the Book Barn in Niantic, a place where you could buy used books. We went to all three locations, but the best by far was the one outdoors. There were carts like ones that you would see in a theme park selling trinkets and toys. There were cabin-sized units that housed 3-4 rows of book shelves. There were smaller shed-sized units too. Each “section” focused on a subject or genre.
Then you had paved and roughly cleared paths looking like a network of veins that guided you from one section to another. There was an area where you could sit and play games. My son and I played checkers. At the center of it all was a larger home that held more books. This was a magical place that had, over the years, been slowly consumed by the forest until you couldn’t distinguish one from the other and it would only appear if you incanted a specific spell. If I didn’t have two children supposedly dying from starvation, I would’ve stayed there all day. I came away with River of Doubt by Candace Millard and John Lennon: The Life by Phillip Norman.
When we had kids, my wife bought tons of books. She hit Amazon, Barnes & Noble, eBay, and garage sales. My children were (and still are) voracious readers. But we had very little room to store these books. And I didn’t want to toss them or sell them or donate them. When we got my daughter a Kindle in 2008 I told my wife that we should just download books straight to the device. Then I thought how ridiculous that sounded. Reading was supposed to be something you physically held and had to physically page turn, not casually swipe left or swipe right. This was way before swiping left or right had its current meaning.
So was I a snob? I don’t think so. Maybe a hypocrite. After all, I hadn’t read an actual newspaper since 2004, when my wife and I were newly married and having a Sunday paper still felt like what all young married couples were supposed to have. But I’d have to evolve.
The iPad As A MePad
I got an iPad in 2014. It was the cool device at the moment (and still is depending on who you ask). But then I tried to figure out what to do with it. Though you could buy accessories, such as a keyboard to replicate a laptop experience, it wasn’t the same as my MacBook.
Then I realized that the iPad was a “me” thing not a work thing. It was a way to have something that separated me from work–the MacBook was business and the iPad was pleasure. It was a consumption tool. Who would do the consuming? Me. And so I used it for viewing YouTube, Netflix, various websites, and playing an awful lot of Solitaire and Angry Birds. The things I was consuming felt like empty calories. Ok, binge watching The Office, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men was definitely filling. Then Catholic guilt hit me. There had to be more to the iPad than what I was using it for. Years later I decided to check out the Apple Book store. I remember watching Steve Jobs demoing an early version back in 2010. It started with Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain then Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson then Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford, and, lastly, FDR by Jean Edward Smith. It was a good run.
The books were great but forget reading on a patio or at the beach or anywhere there was sunlight. The glare was horrendous.
My verdict? It wasn’t so great that it would dissuade me from returning to physical books, which I did the following year.
The Screen (And the Page) Gets Smaller
At the beginning of the pandemic, I was struggling to finish several books. I was halfway through Range by David Epstein when I stopped. I picked it up again months later and finished. I’m actually going to try a third time to finish Jon Meacham’s book on Andrew Jackson, American Lion. Not that it’s boring. It’s the few opportunities to steal a handful of minutes to read several pages. And if you’re a rather slow reader like me and you’re tackling a book with word-rich pages like Meacham’s, it takes a while to get through a couple pages.
It wasn’t until about October of this year when I had a hankering to read again. It had been about four months. I wanted to see what was out there. Rather than jump to Amazon, I again went to the Apple Books app. I scrolled around and saw a whole bunch of stuff that I knew I’d enjoy reading but just didn’t have the time. It wasn’t until I saw I’m The Man: The Story Of That Guy From Anthrax by Scott Ian. The book was about seven years old and I remember when it was released. I was a huge Anthrax fan. I love Scott Ian. My want and my love coalesced in the form of a book by a guy in a speed metal band from the 1980s.
I bought the e-book on my iPhone and finished it in about a month.
It was such a great experience that I went back on the app and looked for something else to read. I love history and biographies. Then I saw Showtime by Jeff Pearlman. I love sports. I subscribe to Jeff’s podcast and Substack, which if you’re an aspiring writer you should pause here and subscribe immediately. It happened again, like with the Scott Ian book. I loved that era of basketball having been raised on Lakers and Celtics. I respect Jeff’s work. Oddly, I had just listened to an engrossing episode of his podcast where he interviewed food writer Anne Byrn.
I bought the book on my iPhone and finished it in about a month.
This was the actual point where I came to the realization that I love reading on my iPhone. Not on my iPad. Not on my MacBook. My iPhone. The reason and the only reason: portability. To be more specific: convenience.
A book or an iPad is just one more thing I have to carry around with me. This (in addition to being happily entrenched in the Apple universe) is why I don’t buy a Kindle. My phone is with me a lot more than my wife or kids or my wife and kids combined. And it felt great to have my library of books available to me in my pocket…where my iPhone resided.
I can read on the toilet until I lose the feeling in my legs that when I get up I wobble like a newborn calf. I can, with the lights out and my wife sound asleep, still read if I am absolutely held by the story and want to just read one more page. And by the way, that “one more page” turns into about 20 more “one more pages”. If I’m waiting at a doctor’s office or at the mechanic, I can whip out the iPhone and read. My wife already was used to me constantly checking my phone because of my job. So if she saw me staring at my phone with the intensity of a Jedi trying to levitate his X-wing, she assumed it was work.
“No way was he doing something recreational that only he benefits from while I’m juggling the dog, dinner, and the kids with their homework,” she probably thought to herself.
Oh, if she only knew.
A minor thing about reading a book on my iPhone was the page numbers. If a book was 400 pages, that’s a different number on a phone. After all, the size of an actual page is larger than the page on the phone and thus can only accommodate so many words. For example, Showtime, according to an Amazon description, is actually 512 pages. On my phone it’s 1105. I make a big deal because it seems daunting to finish a book with so many pages. In actuality, I can fly through the iPhone pages quickly to where I’ve knocked out 40 and it feels like an accomplishment. Small, I know, but significant from a mental standpoint.
New Frontier
After finishing Showtime, I was on a reading high. In my mind, there was no going back. I’ve already targeted two of Pearlman’s other books.
But at work we had an office Secret Santa gift exchange. We utilized a service called Elfster where you can list the things you want so your Secret Santa knew what to get you. Without thinking, I built a very diverse list of books. The co-worker who drew my name was extremely generous in getting three of the nine I had on my list: Eat A Peach by David Chang, The Storyteller by Dave Grohl, and The Good Neighbor - The Life and Work of Fred Rogers. I started with Chang’s book.
But as I hold the book in my hand and turn the page to find out what’s next, in the back of my head I’m kicking myself for not asking for an Apple gift card, which I would’ve used to buy a book on my iPhone. Mind you, this isn’t a comment on Chang’s book at all. It’s great. But when I find myself in the car line waiting to get my daughter in high school or my son in middle school, I’ve got roughly two hours of reading…which are lost because I forgot to bring the book with me. Fail.
Suddenly, I have to step outside the bedroom to read in the living room where I could have the lights on and not wake my wife. When going to sit on a toilet and then taking a shower, I grab my clothes and my book. While waiting for dinner to finish in the oven, I’ll take the book and try to get in a couple pages. Suddenly, my wife knew I had a bit of free time on my hands. Know who ended up in the backyard laying down 50 pieces of sod that next day? This guy.
All About Me (Or You)
Why did I so passionately and devotedly cling to the notion that reading had to come from an actual book? I like to think that I am a progressive-minded person who adapts and explores new things. But I was clinging to a centuries old ritual when a friendlier alternative was available.
Here’s my answer to the question. Did you notice that I’ve listed a shitload of books while writing this? I call it what it is: vanity.
Ooh look at all the books that I’ve read or will be reading. Aren’t you impressed with me? I’m learned. I’m smart. I’m worldly. Perhaps this applies to others as well. How can it not?
I remember going to the home of a person who was very wealthy. And I knew he was wealthy because he had a room that was just his “study”. I was young and had never met a guy who had his own personal space that wasn’t the garage. He had three large bookshelves that went from floor to ceiling. And they were packed with books. I remember scanning some of the titles. You had works by Ernest Hemingway and Stephen King sprinkled amongst Tolstoy, Shakespeare, and Twain. I was wowed. I asked if he had read them all. I was willing to settle for him confessing to having read most but will read the rest when time presents itself. Instead he said he didn’t read a single one. It was a function of his interior designer’s work. I was confused. But I take that now to mean that it’s just meant to impress. They were decorative pieces.
I was in a CEO’s office once and he had a small table of books from folks such as Jim Collins and Stephen Covey. But propped on an easel looking contraption that was the size of a hardcover book was Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. The cover was of a leather material and the title was in a gold embossed writing. It looked ornamental and was likely serving that very purpose.
I pointed to the book and said, “Page turner, huh?”.
The CEO shrugged. It was a gift from a mentor.
Vanity.
I’m a huge Beatles fan and one year for Christmas my in-laws bought me The Beatles Anthology book. This thing was so large that it took up a quarter of my coffee table. Who, outside of Shaquille O’Neal, was supposed to read this? It looked like something from the middle ages when the scribes would pull out a book of texts. It would make a loud thud on the table due to its heft. This Anthology book was the same. It was large and cumbersome and I feared that it could kill my young daughter if it fell on her.
I thanked them because I really do love the book. But it was no different than the towels in the bathroom that hang on the rack but are to never be used or touched under any circumstance because their reason for being–matching the decor of the bathroom–isn’t their reason for invention–to dry oneself off.
Not all people flaunt their books or even display their towels in this manner, but I’m willing to bet that you know at least a couple who do.
As for the Anthology book? It’s in my closet. Why? My wife felt that it didn’t match the rest of the living room.
Vanity.
The Vow
I made a promise to myself that once I got through the books gifted to me, I would dive exclusively into digital books on my iPhone. Hell, I might even do it in between the hardcover books I have at the moment. The portability and convenience dwarfs whatever nostalgia there is that comes with holding a hardcover or paperback in my hands.
This isn’t to say that I’m done with reading physical books. It’s highly unlikely, but you never know. I could easily slide back every now and then. But to truly satisfy my hunger for reading, it has to also be convenient and accessible. The friction is in having to bring one more device or having one more thing that has to be tucked under your arm or packed in your luggage. When I start flying again, I’m not going through that inconvenience.
People will read this and tell me I’m being ridiculous. They’ll say that if it’s a good book, you’re going to read it and have it on your person as much as you can. And I will agree with them. They’ll say I’m being lazy. And I will agree with them. People can come up with any number of reasons to counter my shift. And I could agree with them or not. My reasoning will remain the same.
Or, I can speak of environmental reasons. Am I saving the Earth with one less printed item that eventually will get discarded in a landfill where a bird could choke on the pages? Perhaps.
At that I’ll tell them, “Hey, I’m saving the environment.”
Vanity.
Thanks for reading! I would love to know your thoughts not just on this post but on all of my postings to date. Until next time, please keep reading. Hit me up at afewthousandwords@gmail.com.