Hi, my name is Esther and I'm a bookaholic

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I am a book-a-holic. I was raised listening and reading the great classics of literature. My sister and I would read at least a book per month and comment on it endlessly.

Personally, I like paperbacks. I like touching the dead wood version, flipping through the pages, feeling them, smelling them...

Yes, I am a book-a-holic, deconstructing every book that I can get a hold of.

Since I have been living on my own I seem to have undertaken an addiction for not collecting, but, literally, hoarding books--which is a problem when you have to move out of a place every 9 months.

But times have changed and we no longer have the space, or the time, or the space in our minds, to go to a bookstore and spend hours going through the shelves, as one of the panelists mentioned; or remember to take the book we are reading with us when we go out. Sometimes even our bags are too full or too heavy, and our minds too cluttered, to take books in.

Times have changed.

I have developed a thing for ordering books online and, when they come in in the mail, I experience firsthand what one of the panelists said, that part of what makes books books is the limitation of their form, that they leave readers to work.

Work in what way, you may ask.

Well, not only do we have to be more diligent with the book, seeing it sit in our shelves, but also, as was discussed in the video, we are pushed to be more attentive and mindful of what we are reading if we want to understand it and be able to picture scenes in our minds. With print books we don't have the aid of pictures or diagrams to help us analyze what is being said in text. We are on our owns.

But, precisely because of this, and although print books are awesome and leave more work to the imagination, they also have the potential to isolate readers, outside of reading communities, of society as reading becomes a more individual enterprise.

I found interesting what Tim Oreilly mentioned about the new possibilities of social interaction that come out with ebooks. Indeed, as ebooks are more available, as there is more access to texts of all kinds because, aside from the initial investment of buying an ereader, ebooks in general tend to be cheaper, sharing  becomes easier.

My sister and I did it the old way, exchanging print versions of books and our own perceptions of them, but I cannot help but think that ebooks open up possibilities of interaction and sharing because they are there, they are available.

In this time when availability and convenience is crucial, I think ebooks are a solution for readers who cannot take paperbacks everywhere or have large libraries at home. In this time when the culture of "culture" has been displaced with new forms, I appreciate the fact that the technology has taken one of the most fundamental factors in the transmission of knowledge and democratize it so that the experience of immersing reading won't go away.