On the other hand, you have been trained from childhood to use your imagination when you pick up a book. Imagination is far better than TV, so it hooks you right away.

There is something in the whole ritual of reading a book that is very different from reading an electronic copy of something, especially from a computer. Books often have a scent that perhaps triggers the senses in ways a computer can't. You can't curl up in a big, comfy chair to read from a computer (laptops and personal electronic devices you might be able to get away with ), you have to sit in a chair, in front of a screen, and read -- you can do it, but just isn't the same as "curling up with a good book".

I think there is also something about holding a book in your hands, turning the pages, underlining or highlighting...

So, books stimulate your sense of smell, sense of touch, sense of sight; they also provoke a sense of nostalgia and relaxation.

Computers stimulate your sense of sight, maybe your sense of touch (but not nearly so much as a book) and can be uncomfortable to sit in front of because of the chair you have to sit in and the eye strain, neck strain...

Now for what I hope is an even better answer from one who has been forced, from necessity, to switch to books on tape from books in print. I know it's a different format from the computer screen you were talking about, but be patient with me for a bit and I'll draw the correlation. When my vision first started going bad I rebelled against the idea of books on tape. My parents signed me up with the library for the blind without asking me and I refused service for almost four years. It wouldn't be the same, I told myself. Finally, when the selection of large print books failed me, I grugdingly ordered some on tape and started listening. It took me a long time to adapt, but now it feels natural, comforting, and real to me to listen instead of look.

The relationship? I think we get used to things a certain way. It's not that one way is inherently better than another, it's just that this is the way it's always been. Books are familiar friends to us. It's psychological. We associated not just the story or even the words of the story with pleasure, but also the feel of the paper, the way we sit or lay, the smells, the sounds, etc. This is why some people need music when they read or write and others need silence. It's associations. Now, after almost six years of listening to my books on tape, I associate that with the pleasure of a good story. There are even some readers I enjoy more than others because they've read better books in the past.

Geez, I just repeated everything Christine said, didn't I.

Reminder to self: Read all the posts first. Read all the posts first.

I think the answer to your second question, is physicality. Things aren't real until you hold it in your hand. That is why books are magical. They are a portal from the etherial to the physical.

This is despite the fact that I've read books avidly for nearly three decades. I'm familiar with the textures of different qualities of paper and the feel of different bindings, the smell of new books and old, the sound of pages turning. They just don't matter to me. I tend to ignore any physical sensations that aren't actually part of reading the text anyway.

quote:

---

I think the answer to your second question, is physicality. Things aren't real until you hold it in your hand.

---

Preach it, TruHero. A printed book is a THING, with heft, occupying space, which can be comfortably read and re-read, shared among friends, amd handed down to one's children.

But holding something in one's hand is not the only thing.

quote:

---

This usually includes saying stuff like "it's not REAL if it's just some data somewhere" or "what happens when all the elctricity goes off and we lose everything. The only thing left to read will be books" and "Books are magical."

---

Ok, now let me throw in a few of the not so well known disadvantages to electronic books.

I can take my piece of dead tree and loan it to someone. While I can't read it at the same time, no one may specify that I cannot. And ebook will normally have restrictions, or worse, use things like a credit card number as a key. Now I do understand the reasoning for this. I despise being told what I can and cannot use it with. Until there is a reasonable solution to this paticular problem, a real book continues to have an advantage.

Also, for some reason, ebooks can cost just as much as a real one. This is a bit of a mystery, since it cost the publisher almost nothing to sell you an ebook. The printed version requires paper, binding, and shelf/warehouse space. I'm sure those costs are many times greater than the minimal cost of an ebook. Another reason I stick with real books...I have them.

Perhaps by magic it's meant that there are certain indefinable qualities books have that just can't be explained.

1.) Tangability
2.) History/culture
3.) Brainwashing

According to Dictionary.com, the 4th definition for "magic" as a noun is: 'A mysterious quality of enchantment'.

As an adjective, the second definition is: 'Possessing distinctive qualities that produce unaccountable or baffling effects'

Also, 'Characteristic of something that works although no one really understands why'.

Even with something that can be explained, magic can be a 'feature not generally publicised that allows something otherwise impossible or a feature formerly in that
category but now unveiled' or 'As yet unexplained, or too complicated to
explain'.

JB was just asking how many other people felt this effect, he wasn't asking whether such an effect could exist in theory.

For myself, I find illuminated manuscripts far more "magical" than printed books, even when the manuscript and accompanying illumination exist only in electronic form. But this isn't the case for everyone, nor was it the topic of this thread.

I maintain that the magic of printed books is more in the eye of the beholder than anything inherent in the process of printing. After all, books aren't even printed anymore, and they haven't been for years. Nobody even noticed when they stopped using the printing process and substituted a completely different process. The word has completely lost its former meaning and been adopted to mean something utterly different, only the same in that both processes are means of putting information onto a surface.

Which means nothing to me. And I suspect that it doesn't mean anything to anyone else here, otherwise it would have been mentioned already. I regard the fact that printing is no longer the way books are made as being of importance mainly because of how it affects the economics of actually producing copies of a book, and I don't believe that anything has been lost by adopting a cheaper method of producing something that is indistinguishable to the vast majority of readers.

Whereas most readers can tell the difference between text on a computer screen and type on a collection of bound pages very easily. As can I. I happen to prefer text on a screen. Others prefer type on a page. For me, the preferance is a simple matter of pragmatic issues and comfort. For most people on the other side, it is the same, there are practical and aesthetic arguments for both forms. And there are some other elements of both preferences that can't easily be communicated by arguments.

For me, being able to use a computer to read things is somewhat "magical", in that there are parts of the experience that I can understand but simply cannot explain to persons that do not share it. To most people that prefer books, there is something "magical" that they cannot explain.

For me, the most magical format in which infomation can be communicated is song. But I do not believe that there is anything inherent in the nature of song (here meaning music and vocalization combined) that makes it so. It certainly has competition from other forms of expressive art, with other people.

I would certainly rate illuminated manuscripts higher than printed books, but that is a matter of individual taste. Still, my terrible handwriting has been more than a merely practical hardship for me. I've always wished that I could express myself in beautiful handwriting, and I also have always wished that I could line-draw. Because of that I know about what it would be like for me to lose my voice.

And you know what? It would be much worse for me if I couldn't sing anymore than if I couldn't print and bind books. And I would be much more distressed if suddenly there were no more singing in the world than I was when printed books were quietly replaced with books produced by a process called printing only because the result is basically the same.

[This message has been edited by JBSkaggs (edited December 28, 2004).]

I was just aiming at the incipient argument over whether there was such a thing as "magic" at all. And I chose an extended answer to the actual question (as opposed to the "intended" question, or the "implied" question, or any other i-question) as my blunt force tool.

DJD finds old bookstores magical. I find them dusty firetraps, magical only in that they haven't all burned down (that probably is magic, come to think of it...). I also don't believe that the printing process ever actually lent any special quality to paper that it didn't already possess, good paper is good paper whether you use a printing method or some other transfer process. I hate to admit this, but I think that getting a card made of good handmade paper is much nicer than getting a card expressing the exact same sentiments only printed on machined paper.

So books might appear to be magical to a primitive human.

Conversely if some "wizard" from the future showed up today and wrote words in firey letters in the air a person might assume it was magic, or a sci-fi reader might assume it was a cool trick with holography :-)

Printing and bookbinding technologies rely on physical effects that all primitive humans understood perfectly well, so they would merely have thought it very clever, not magical.

The thing is, magic is an effect of mystery. The mystery doesn't have to be technological (not knowing how something is accomplished). The mystery can be anything, as long as it is something that the observer has a felt desire to know. When you want to understand something, but it is impossible to understand, you feel a sense of awe at the proof of things "beyond your ken". That this awe can be deliberately induced by obfuscation doesn't change the fact that it is a very natural feeling.

In a serious vein, we describe this yearning for something beyond human intelligence and power as "religion". The diminutive "magic" is taken from the name of cultic arts which served as props for small time religions of the past.

For me, the magic is in the text. The sense of wondering awe is inspired by the reflections of that text in the lives of people who put everything on the line for the sake of the sentiments in the text. And the method used to display the text is only interesting to me insofar as it is a practical question. But I'm not like you (in case that needs to be further established ).

Sorcery just seems tough.

So, I guess most agree that the story itself is "magic", while not all agree it depends on the medium in which it is presented.

I have to confess something at this point. I have a copy of Watership Down that has been in my possession since I was a child. Both covers are missing, along with everything before the table of contents and everything after the first page of the lapine glossary. There are chemical stains and at least one prominent burn mark visible, and when you open it every page is browm--rather than yellow--with age.

There aren't any foodstains, no sticky pages. I rarely eat when I'm reading this particular book. It is one of the oldest physical artifacts of my childhood, but it became such becase I never wholly neglected it. Is my connection with this text entirely in the words? Isn't there some attachment to the object itself?

Yes. As strong an attachment as I am capable of feeling for any particular physical object. Not strong enough to save this book from the fate of all the other possessions of my childhood. Eventually it will be misplaced and someone else will throw it away. The thought is poignant, but it doesn't pain me. It is irreplacable, because it is unique. It is unique only insofar as I know this copy from every other copy. If it could be replaced, I would have no attachment to this copy.

All physical objects are like that. Of course, I don't really live in the physical world, I only work here (temporarily, at that). So that skews my perspective a bit. To a human, the text is only real when it has a physical form, the less physical the form the less real the text. To me, the physical form is only real insofar as it has logos or idea. This copy of Watership Down is very real to me, and not all of the logos that makes it so is printed on those pages. Much of the information is not even present in the physical world at all, including my physical memory.

Edited for a hasty mispelling. That'll teach me to try to be funny.

He probably can't even be totally sure that there ever was a real actor who played John Malkovitch, how does Warbric know that they haven't been using computer generated footage of the guy all along?