Kurling up with a Kindle

I have to confess to being slightly envious of my wife. She is an avid reader, and enjoys nothing more than curling in on the sofa in our lounge, with the afternoon sun filtering through the window, and engrossing herself in a novel. She looks so relaxed, content and comfortable, proven by the fact that sometimes wild horses would fail to move her. Her reading habits can be termed “old school”, although she might take offence at the term “old”, in that she prefers books, real books, with covers and pages, and printing. The marketing spin-meisters of Apple’s internationally desirable iPad, Amazon’s Kindle, or Barnes & Noble’s Nook have had no impact on her choice of reading medium whatsoever.

I have touched on the subject of eBooks in a previous column and discussed their convenience and power. The ability to hold the contents of over 1000 books in a device the size of a novel and the thickness of a cell phone is not to be dismissed lightly. We have seen an explosion of new eBook reader brands and models, with more than 45 different models now available. Recent price wars have led to the prices of Kindle’s dropping to less than R950, and other, lesser known brands, to even less. This has opened the market to even more potential readers than ever before, remembering that much like the cell phone industry, the money to be made lies not in the eBook itself, but in the steady stream of book and magazine subscriptions owners subscribe to. The days are not far off when eBooks will be offered free, in exchange for packaged contracts providing a range of weekly electronic newspapers and magazines.

The eBook topic comes up more often these days around dinner tables as more and more people buy into these devices and share their experiences with family, friends, and anyone else they wish to brag to. It came up the other night over a rather delicious meal with friends, but this time, instead of the conversation heading down the usual technology track, it swung to a more interesting one dealing with reading habits. This of course delighted my wife as it fuelled her argument for the tangibility of paper books versus the coolness of an electronic device. There was both heated and extremely humorous discussion as to reading habits, the skipping chapters, methods of selective reading and how this can, or cannot be achieved on an eBook. At times the banter swayed between the jibes about the old school and their tried and tested ways, versus the new technology driven generation, although on the none too small topic of cost both found agreement in the lower prices of the digital versions of books. These days conservative economics trumps all!

These exchanges, aided by the good company and red wine, got me thinking again of how they might impact disabled readers. I am currently playing the fence sitter on this subject, not a position which comes naturally to me. I see the benefits of a compact eBook, capable of holding a number of publications, with a flat, clearly legible screen. I also see the drawbacks of paper books, with their bulk and weight, and pages which refuse to lie flat, all factors which I know hold me back from reading more. So why the awkward position on the fence? Is the decision not clear?

Well, no, it is not, because there is another factor, one which is not easily defined. Perhaps I should call it the “sofa factor”, or in my case the “chair factor”. The wheelchair is a wonderful thing. It is a seat, mobility and access all rolled into one, but one thing a wheelchair is not is a sofa. You cannot flop into a wheelchair. You cannot immerse yourself in a wheelchair. You cannot lounge in a wheelchair, well, not comfortably anyway. And therein lays my dilemma. To really enjoy a good read one needs to be completely relaxed, comfortable, and cushioned all around, much like my wife on one of those lazy Sunday afternoons. For me to read an eBook I would need to be sitting in the wheelchair at a table, and that feels more like studying than relaxing. The scene, in my mind’s eye, just does not seem “right”, similar to one of those photographs where they ask “What is wrong with this picture?”. Perhaps I am missing a piece of the electronic reading puzzle, but until I find it my jury is still out with regard to eBooks, as it weighs up the case of software versus sofa.