I’m reading a 2012 book which predicts the end of books is nigh. Seems like the author was wrong.

Publishers Weekly claims “print + audio” book sales rose every year from 2012 to 2016, even while the audio book portion fell. From 2015 to 2016, board book sales were up 7.43 %, adult nonfiction 6.85 %, and hardcover 5.43 %.  Audio books dropped 13.49 % and mass market books fell 7.71 %. The overall gain is 3.29 %. Not huge. But not ending.

Maybe it’s the last-gasp of a dying technology, but that’s not how it feels in the book store. Both Bookshop Santa Cruz and Brookline Booksmith, the independent booksellers near our left and right coast domiciles respectively, are open seven days a week, stay open later than most of the surrounding restaurants, and seem constantly jammed.

The 2012 book also describes how eBooks differ from real books, with weblike links and pop-ups. Not so for the Kindle, excepting Fire, which is more of a tablet than an eBook. Reading eBook Kindles is a lot like reading a book, including no  circadian-rhythm-disrupting backlight.

I’ve always wondered why all and sundry don’t peruse classics, which I’ve esteemed since girlhood. Recently I got an inkling from a magazine article, which asserted many folks don’t have the leisure, interest, or wit to read any book. Egad. So many books have guided me clock-oblivious through climes unknown, with personages simpatico or alien, and many of those books were considered classics. Set in distant eras, with curious turns of phrase, they truly demand immersion to deliver the full transcendent experience.

Howbeit, I did not savor Tristram Shandy or The Red and the Black, I struggled with the technical whaling pages of Moby Dick, and I despair of ever finishing Ulysses. Aesthete or philistine?

If I had never spent an hour absorbed in a book, I would be a different person. I am happy I live during the Age of Print.