Tag Archives: books

Back to what is a Book?

2 Replies

I was recently reading in my educational psychology book for class when i came across this quote: “In early research, psychologists assumed that people create concepts based on rules about defining attributes, or distinctive features. For example, books all contain pages that are bound together in some way” (Woolfolk 299). This got me thinking about eBooks; surely there is no binding of those. However, going back to our last book viewing, not all of those works we saw were bound either. Perhaps in this case, binding is meant in a less literal sense. As books can be bound by story line, content, characters, and or style, as opposed to only being bound physically. But again it is still up for interpretation.

Advertising Books

2 Replies

It’s weird to see the need to advertise for books, but why is that? when was the last time you saw an ad on the Tv or whatever, for a printed book?

The library got me thinking with their valentines themed push to get people to pleasure read. It’s not that people don’t pleasure read anymore but the use of physical books has declined. It makes sense though, why carry around a big clunky book when a Kindle holds 500 books. With the digitization of print media we lose something culturally, because of the vast amount of text available at a moment to us on the internet we have become addicted to instant literary gratification.

Everyday before I go to classes I read a certain humor website that in many ways is like a magazine; they publish new articles almost everyday and hey they make me laugh. But whatever happened to actually subscribing to a magazine, well it doesn’t work out anymore. Personally I want a new article everyday ready and waiting online when I get up I don’t have the time to wait around for a weekly or monthly magazine subscription.

So for the sake of printed books, go read something that has turnable pages, instead of on a screen.

 

Reaction to Howard Readings

2 Replies

After reading the two chapters in Howard, I realized just how lucky I was to be reading from a one pound or less book with a binding and cover. Previously, I never thought of a book as evolving from something else, as a means of technology. Thinking about the future it is sad to imagine the disappearance of books. Growing up, I assumed that books would be around forever; How could you improve a book? But I guess that is how people way back when felt about writings on papyrus, parchment, stone, and clay. Recently, the new craze of e-books has popped up and dented the sales of actual books. Call me old fashioned, but I can not wrap my head around that yet. Even reading short pieces online bothers me. In fact most of the time I choose to print out what I am reading no matter how short, or long for that matter. There is something about the book that is lost when switched over electronically. To me, at least, just having the physical book in front of me with pages that I can highlight, annotate, or even just feel it is there, is important to me. It is scary to think that one day everything may work electronically. Will people even leave their dwellings? What will happen to human interaction- will it all be over a computer? Will we be able to document our writings to display like those we saw on Tuesday? Or will none of it mean very much considering everyone will have access to the internet to view it? Will important things be lost in the presence of too much information?