by Lance Thompson

Technology continues its campaign to better the book. The latest attempt at freeing reading matter from the printed page is called Kindle, by Amazon. It is a $400 electronic device which enables users to download books just as they would songs for their i-pods. It offers a catalog of 90,000 titles, including 100 of the New York Times top 112 best sellers. It follows a similar device by Sony that offered 25,000 titles. I remain a skeptic.

Ninety thousand titles is a generous array of reading material–enough for a decent small town library. Our downtown library in Boise, Idaho, lists over 300,000 titles. Obviously, the Amazon people have had to apply a selection process in which the criteria for inclusion would understandably be fiscally based. This leads me to believe that the vast majority of available titles would be recent, with comparatively few classics thrown in. It reminds me of those radio contests in which listeners are asked to vote on the top 100 "greatest songs of all time." There is a handful of classics from other eras, but the vast majority of the "greatest songs of all time" invariably are those released in the previous six months.

I’m not complaining about how songs are chosen for such countdowns, or how books are chosen for Kindle and its ilk, or even about the increasing presence of technology in our lives. I merely point out that any title that’s not current or a perennial best-seller probably won’t make the Kindle list.

I’m a non-recovering bibliophile. I find it difficult to pass by a used bookstore (a once struggling business model saved by the internet) without at least a cursory look inside. I have an addiction to books and a fondness for a well-stocked home library. If there is a greater solitary enjoyment of home than pulling a good book from the shelf and settling into a chair by the fire, it is unknown to me.

This affinity, and a well-stocked local library system, have enabled me to discover some great books in the past few months. Some are new publications, but most are older volumes long gone from best-seller lists. Few of the latter category would be available to Kindle users, so I’ll just mention a few:

Transatlantic, Samuel Cunard Isambard Brunel and the Great Atlantic Steamships by Stephen Fox (Harper Collins 2003): This is an extensively researched tale of the competition between the great steamship companies and their executives to gain ascendancy in the hazardous commerce of transporting travelers across the storm-tossed and unpredictable North Atlantic. Technical innovation, personal ambition and vivid accounts of the Atlantic crossing make this illuminating and well-told account a nautical treat.

What’s It All About? by Michael Caine (Random House 1992): Actor Michael Caine has lent his considerable talents to many excellent films since this autobiography was written, but that doesn’t diminish the enjoyment. The author shows that he is just as gifted a storyteller as he is an actor, and the hours reading this book feel like pleasant conversation seasoned with Hollywood lore, personal revelation, and great comic timing. One can never tell if an autobiography is accurate, but this one feels honest, and it offers the reader much more than the standard movie star’s tell-all.

Wake of the Wahoo by Forest J Sterling (Chilton Company 1960): This memoir from a World War II submarine yeoman serving on a boat with an illustrious record was not only full of nuts and bolts submarine operations, but was also surprisingly literate, emotional and keenly observed. The author tells of nearing the Hawaiian islands, and being able to smell the scents of tropical flowers before land is in sight. He talks about the ordeal of a depth charge attack, which is a staple of submarine lore. But he adds the personal observance that the shock of the explosions resulted in a rain of cork, chipped paint and dust from the overhead, and that he remembers wondering where dust would come from on a submarine. The reader is taken along on combat patrols, shore leave and given an authentic insider’s view of the silent service.

Here is Your War by Ernie Pyle, Holt & Company, 1943. The pages of this somewhat bruised first edition are yellowed but intact, the binding still unbroken, with a reminder to "Buy War Bonds" in the endpapers. Pyle’s reporting is a standard for war correspondents. He is a master of the illustrative detail, the hopelessness and humor of the daily struggle to survive at the front, and he accurate captures the voice and concerns of the ordinary soldier.

The text is compelling and moving. Its ability to take the reader back to 1943 is enhanced by the knowledge that the book itself was being read at that time, perhaps by a father or sister or sweetheart of a soldier gone off to war, trying to connect through Pyle’s words with a world the reader could not begin to imagine, and a loved one far beyond reach. The book is an artifact of its time, a connection between reader, author, subject and era. Reading it, holding it, is a link to a vital period of American history.

Few if any of these books would be on the electronic download list. So I wish electronic book sellers success in their endeavors to eliminate the bulk of pages and solve the bookshelf space problem with virtual efficiency.

But I remember attending the Computer Game Developers Conference many years ago in San Jose. One speaker, an innovator in computer technology, held up a hardcover book as an economical, nearly flawless example of effective user interface. "It’s portable, self-contained, requires no power source, offers random access," he said as he thumbed through the pages, "and it has universal market penetration."

Not to mention, it looks better on the shelf.

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Lance Thompson lives in Idaho with his daughter and his wife, who is currently working on her first book.