The Brothers

I've been reading a lot more recently (as long as you allow that listening to an audiobook is reading.) I don't have an e-reader though... Last week, I read my first book on a screen - my computer rather than an e-reader - and the experience was OK. I didn't have that wonderful tactile experience of turning a page but a book is a book is a book. The book I read was The Brothers, the first novel published by my daughter.

I have to say that I enjoy fantasy and science fiction and I love my daughter but with that disclaimer, I really enjoyed the book. It falls into the YA fantasy genre so it is a quick and easy read but it is not shallow. Khloe Alwell's struggles, while not exactly the same as every teenage girl's, are close enough that we can all identify - who am I? how do I fit in? what is my place in the world? how do I find meaning and purpose? The characters all ring true.

I found it a fun read and I'm really looking forward to the second book in the trilogy. Alexis is only charging $3.99 for it on Smashwords so it is about the same investment as a latte at Starbucks.

what is a book?

Just what constitutes a book these days. I have shelves full of paper bound with glue and thread, covered in ink... I know those are books. Some of you read on Kindles of Ipads. Are those books? Cheryl and I listen to "books" on disk as we commute back and forth to Santa Barbara from Buellton along the Gaviota Coast. Are those books?

We've read or listened to some wonderful books recently and I've found myself wanting to blog about a few or at least mention them in my blogs but wasn't sure how. Should I say, "we're reading The Things They Carried" or do I say that "we're listening to...?" Frankly, something inside me is a little embarrassed to say that we're listening to whatever book as if that is cheating somehow. And in some ways it must be a different experience. The reader does impose himself or herself into the text and does interpret it with their inflections and tone of voice and somehow that does remove part of the experience we get when reading a bound document, providing the voice, the inflections, in our minds. Clearly it is not as different an experience as watching a movie made from a book, but it is still different in some way.

How significant is that difference? Is that audio book, whether on disk or MP3 or whatever, still a book or is it a different medium altogether? And how about an i-book? What do we lose when we don't hold the paper and flip the pages? What do you think?