Little Anecdote For You Guys...

Something happened the other night that I thought I'd share with you guys, since it's relevant to our recurring overarching conversation about e-books v p-books (not a huge fan of that term, by the way. Is it too entrenched to coin a new one? Something to think about).

So my boyfriend is a computer programmer and a graphic designer, and if it ain't code or a book about code, he ain't readin' it. I've tried lots of approaches to changing this. I got him a copy of Candide with a really cool comic-book type cover, I got him a Murakami novel since he'd translated some Murakami for a class once, I got him a book about the same subject as his undergrad thesis...etc. But he never made it past the first few pages of anything I got him, preferring instead to build his O'Reilly library and read PHP guides online.

Recently, he bought an iPad, and so far it's been quite the love affair - he brought it home after his first day with it at his office and said he already couldn't imagine doing his job without it. I was so focused on playing with the beat-making apps that I didn't even notice he'd downloaded a Kindle app, as well as a couple of other e-readers.

The other night I was sitting out on our porch when he came outside holding his iPad, looking very solemn. I asked him what was up, and he said, "Here, I wanted you to read this," and handed me his iPad.

What I was looking at was his Kindle reader, opened to Dave Eggers's first book, And You Shall Know Our Velocity. He had highlighted this little passage that he wanted me to read. I read it, and said, "This sounds pretty good."

"It really touched me," he said, sounding kind of surprised at himself.

So, here we are, y'all. Hard evidence that not only can a person be truly touched and affected by something they've read on an e-reader, but that e-readers allow a person be touched by a novel that hasn't cracked one open since college. Food for thought!