The Paper Books/e-Book Readers War That Isn’t

When I won a Sony Digital Reader from CBC last year, the first thing I did was take all my books, magazines, and newspapers to the street, gathered them in a pile, and burned them. I vowed I would never read another word that was not printed electronically.

Prior to this, so in love was I with my paper books that I simply stopped reading things on the computer or my iPod Touch. If it’s printed electronically, it will not offer me the tactile sensation of true book reading. This is why I ignore those electronic traffic circulation signs on Cote-de-Liesse.

Of course, neither of those things are true. A humourous essay by Ross Duncan on globeandmail.com discusses his recent conversion to e-books and his guilty feelings over abandoning paper. What I find troubling is this idea that you have to choose. You see people complaining that they’d never allow one in their home (and one person in the comments section oddly claiming it will lead to literacy being restricted to the upper classes) and others claiming they read exclusively on their iPad.

I see it differently. I think e-readers will complement paper books, not replace them. Not entirely. The benefits of e-books for people who read while travelling are obvious as it saves valuable carry-on luggage space. I also think it solves certain issues when it comes to your living space, particularly is space is at a premium or you’re just in the mood to un-clutter. CBC-Radio One’s the Sunday Edition tackled this this past weekend with a panel consisting of a book seller, an author, and a cultural reporter who happened to be host Michael Enright’s cousin. One of the panelists helpfully compared those who toss out books they’ll never read again or probably didn’t like much in the first place to Nazi book burners.

But again, the argument they made went almost entirely on the side of paper books. If the panel was made up of people who weren’t in the cultural community, it may have been a different discussion.

While I enjoy my e-reader, if I hadn’t won the one I have, it would have been a long time before I bought one of my own. I also probably wouldn’t have purchased one without Wi-Fi. Unlike an iPad, it’s a single purpose device which is a weakness but also a strength as it keeps the distractions to a minimum. There are also DRM issues with e-books.

I don’t see paper books going away anytime soon. Certainly, children’s books will continue to be produced. Kids like to touch their books and the screen isn’t going to replace that. I always have bookshelves in my apartment. They’ll just be more streamlined, holding only the books that mean something to me. So I’ll continue to buy both.

Things I Said I’d Never Do

In addition to TV, disposable diapers, and anything Disney, we can add one more thing to that ever-growing list of promises broken:

• Give him his own food if he doesn’t like what we’re eating

I said, to myself, "Our child will be open to all kinds of foods and there is no way I’m making that processed crap just to get him through dinner." I mean, you’d think a toddler would be thrilled with last night’s supper of broiled salmon, brown rice, and steamed asparagus served in a lemon/garlic vinaigrette, but not ours, apparently. Fortunately, he will sit and eat an entire box of blueberries if we let him so the blueberry producers of Quebec (and, ok, elsewhere) will be happy to know he’s keeping them in business for another year.

I thought it was a matter of perseverance but I guess that, week after week of being worn down by "NOOOOOO!!!", it’s a relief to see him happily chowing down peanut butter and jam sandwiches cut to look like dinosaurs.

There are several factors that influence a child’s eating habits: parents, peer group, mass media, etc. None of these, however, will be as influential as the 38 minute PowerPoint presentation I’m going to produce about the health benefits of a diet rich in fresh fruits and vegetables in which I’ll droningly read bullet points that he can easily read himself.

I figure after sitting through one presentation, I can just threaten to make him watch it every time he doesn’t eat his vegetables.

Family Life in Denmark

Two mothers, one a Londoner, the other from Copenhagen, swap lives for a week and take notes. Both consider the approaches to parenting in both societies and wonder which one does it best. For my money, I’d probably want to live in Copenhagen rather than London, assuming I was affluent enough to live comfortably in either place (as the women writing the article clearly are). This is mainly because I’ve got some Danish ancestry and I’d like to imagine that I’m descended from an open, progressive and attractive people. Really, though, it’s because I just prefer smaller cities to larger ones as matter of temperament. I also like that Denmark appears to give you the biggest bang for your tax buck in regards to subsidised daycare and parental leave.

One thing the Danish writer noticed in London, however, was the absence of children’s voices in the streets. In Copenhagen, kids play unsupervised in the largely car-free streets and toddlers are left sleeping in their strollers outside shops whereas here such activity would get you arrested for child endangerment. Now, to be fair, this is because Copenhagen has consistently adopted pro-public transit, pro-bike, pro-pedestrian, anti-car policies. How much of this is simply forward thinking on the part of municipal governments and how much is a reflection of the views of Danes is probably a matter for debate. Do such policies because Danes want them or do Danes want them because they exist? I have a feeling it’s the latter. But certainly children here would probably play in the streets more often if they weren’t in danger of being run over.

Copenhagen is a small-ish city where such progressive measures would be easier to implement than in London, or say, Montreal. That said, I’d love to see more cities try to be a little more like Copenhagen. Then I read about the work being done to put a rail link from Trudeau Airport to downtown and despair.

Child’s Play

There’s an interesting article in today’s New York Times about the movement among upper-middle class white Americans to bring back children’s play. The general idea is that, in today’s world of over-scheduling, video games, and toys with predetermined narratives, children no longer just play freely without regard to rules because they don’t know how. It’s doesn’t help that because many parents have children when they’re older, they forget how to play themselves.

I kid (sort of) about the upper-middle class white Americans thing. It’s the Times. It’s their readership. Every slight change in their lifestyle is now part of a “movement”. But as I read the article, while generally agreeing with the premise, I also see the “we’re letting our kid’s toys … into our living room! Isn’t that just wild?!” and that photo of the Roskers and I worry that I may suffer vision issues from excessive eye-rolling.

*ahem*

Anyway.

At his day care, there is a free-play component to every day so I’m glad that he has that, in addition to social aspect, which he misses at home. We live in an older neighbourhood with few young families so he doesn’t have friends nearby that he can just call on. My neighbourhood growing up was a newly erected subdivision so many of the kids on the street were all the same age. Playing was simply a matter of walking out the door and finding someone. Today, we need to add it to Google Calendar.

I do admit this is an issue with me. I’m good at preparing meals, giving my kid a bath, reading to him, actively watching TV with him (or that same opening scene from Toy Story 3 over and over again). But when it comes to sitting down and playing with him, I’m at a loss for what to do. He always hands me his Thomas train and says, “Daddy do”. I just assume at some point, he’ll take over and start playing on his own. So I do my best to just play with him until I can hand the train back and say, “James do”.

Welcome to 2011

Sweet mother of God! I got a firetruck for Christmas!

And so our holidays are ended. We got an extended stay in New Brunswick so we managed not only to see our family for more than five minutes but met up with some friends as well. The weather managed to not be horrible, despite the flooding and the coastline apparently tumbling into the Bay of Fundy because of massive storms. A previous attempt to get home was scuttled by a hurricane. We made merry.

I’m enjoying my new slippers and Super Mario Brothers. And Kerry loves her slippers and her necklace. And as you can see, James loves his firetruck and various other vehicles. We tend to keep Christmas low-key as far as the presents go and I hope to keep it that way. This “we gotta outdo last year” attitude is … depressing. Gifts are nice but it’s just stuff. I do realize that someday, he’ll have a list.

James spoke his first full sentence: “Gussie’s eating Mummy’s scarf!” (Gus is my parents’ dog). He’s developing by leaps and bounds, parroting everything we say to him or anything he hears on CBC. He also loves to sing. He’s two, of course, so that means tantrums which are beginning to increase and therefore so are the “time outs” which I now realize are isn’t so much a punishment but a chance for him (and me) to take a breath. So far they work. You can imagine how fun that is in a departure lounge. Most of the time, though, he’s a just a nice kid who’s in a nice hugging stage right now.

Because I have a toddler now, it means that I’m four days late in wishing all my readers (all ten of you) the best in 2011.