Siva Vaidhyanathan, media studies professor at the University of Virginia, talking about the worst-case scenario in an all-digital world:

“Amazon has done so much to bully both readers and publishers. And yet if it were to collapse, it would cause chaos.”

At the root of that chaos would be the immense loss of media, and the wholesale disappearance of works—not just from personal collections, but altogether. “At the start of the 22nd century, we are going to find ourselves in a situation with huge gaps in knowledge and culture. Because none of these companies will be around.”

P.T., an online-only game and one of my favourite games of last year, was removed from the PlayStation store by its publisher. You can’t download it again. If you want to play it now, your only option is to buy a second-hand PlayStation 4 with the game already installed on it. And once the hard drives die in these machines? That’s it, no-one will ever be able to play PT again.

Craig Mod has some theories surrounding the apparent decline in ebook sales. TL;DR: he reckons it’s mostly to do with the physical experience of reading on ereaders (and let’s be clear, when we say ‘ereaders’, there’s really only one player in town, the Kindle). For me, he borders too much on the fetishisation of the physical form of the book. For example, here’s his description of the travel guide City Secrets

Bound in rust-coloured cloth, rough against the skin, with jet-black foil‑stamped lettering and a small key on the cover, City Secrets was skinny. The trim size was non‑standard, much taller than wide. It bent easily, fit handily into my jacket pocket, and was made with cover boards that had a reassuring springy resilience. The combination of the size and the cloth cover made it feel like a travel companion – a book that could take a beating, be dragged around the world, stored for years, and returned to, again and again.

It’s like Nigella-style food erotica for the lit crowd.

But I sort of agree with some of what he’s saying. As I mentioned before (and I’ll continue to mention at any available opportunity), I recently — finally! — finished Infinite Jest. Now, Infinite Jest is a goddamn doorstop. A thousand pages of some of the densest prose you’ll find. It should be the perfect candidate for Kindle-reading. But I read the entire thing on a physical book. I hauled that monster in and out of the city every day on my commute, even though it took up most of the space in my bag, simply because it was just a more pleasant experience than reading on the Kindle.

The worst part is that a lot of the things that keep the Kindle from being a genuinely great reading experience (as opposed to an entirely passable one) are fairly minor. They’re not insurmountable. They’re mostly niggly details like shitty font options and character spacing that could most charitably be described as ‘schizophrenic’. And these issues are getting addressed, albeit at a glacial pace. This June, almost eight years after the first Kindle was first released and seven generations into the Kindle product line, Amazon released firmware that finally fixed its shitty hyphenation and layout engine.

So the changes are slowly coming, but Amazon’s reluctance to release any information or suggestions of where they plan to take the Kindle is baffling to me. Especially when it’s their mealticket item. Apple called the Apple TV their “hobby” and said nothing about its roadmap (until they finally did). Amazon seem to be treating the Kindle in the same way. Is it any wonder people are returning to books? I’m sure they’ll be back to the Kindle when something dramatically enhance the experience on there, but who knows how long that will be?

Personally, there are two things I would love to see that would improve my relationship with the Kindle. First, release an updated Kindle DX. You know, the bigger Kindle. The “Kindle Pro”. My neighbour in Rome, an editor, used to have one and it was the cadillac of readers even then. The resolution of the Kindle Voyage is finally at a print-like level, but the size of the actual screen means it’s useless for anything but imitating cheap paperbacks. A slightly larger physical screen would open the device up to so much more.

Second, and this is a cheap, simple win - I’d love to see the Kindle display the cover of the book I’m currently reading instead of the Kindle’s shitty generic screensavers. When I read a physical book, I am greeted by its cover every time I look at it. I know the name of the author, I know the name of the book. On the Kindle, this stuff is hidden away from everyday view, so it’s possible to read a book and have no idea of its title or who wrote it. You’re cut off from a relationship with the book in favour of a relationship with its content. The cover, that singular piece of design that, let’s face it, we almost always base our initial judgement of a book on, is completely removed on the Kindle. Without it, a book is just a collection of photocopied pages held together with sticky-tape.

1.

We’re in the middle of getting a terrifying amount of work done to our house in Marino, so we’ve temporarily decamped out to my mother-in-law’s house in Greystones¹. My commute into work has switched from a 15-20 minute cycle each way to a 50-minute train ride each way. As a result of this new-found extra (dead) time, my reading has gone through the goddamn roof in the seven weeks since I’ve been out here. Instead of just the few minutes of reading I can snatch before falling asleep, I’ve got these huge swathes of time in my day where there is almost nothng else to do but read. Here’s a graph of my reading, based on what I’ve logged to Goodreads:

I’m finishing books I’d previously started and given up on (e.g. A Wrinkle in Time²), and books I’d been too terrified to even begin (e.g. Radley Balko’s Rise of the Warrior Cop).

As a result of this, I’ve decided there will probably never be a better time to tackle Infinite Jest.

2.

Infinite Jest will be the eleventh book I’ve read in the seven weeks I’ve been out in Greystones. In this time, no-one has ever come up and commented to me about the book I’m reading. Even when I’m reading stuff that I secretly want people to come and talk to me about (e.g. John Darnielle’s Wolf in White Van³), nothing.

On Friday evening, as the train came into the station in Greystones, after I’d packed my copy of Infinite Jest into my coat and got my coat on, a complete stranger came over and sat down beside me. “Sorry, I couldn’t help but notice the book you’re reading there. How are you getting on with it?” I told him how I was really happy - I’m enjoying it because I’m actually making significant progress in the book (currently on page 305, which is the first time I’ve even got past page 100). “Yeah, stick with it. There’ll be parts in there that will make you want to give up, but stick with it, it’s totally worth it”, he said.

“Oh, I don’t intend to, I’ve also got a non-fiction book going at the same time to keep me sane”, I said.

“Good idea! Well…”

And then, awkward silence, because what else is there to say?

Now I feel awkward. Does this interaction mean I’m part of the problem, a pretentious DFW lit-bro? Do I now need to give up on Infinite Jest entirely, just in case I fall into some stereotype?

3.

I get home and I tell the above story to my wife. She says “yeah, that’s weird!” She knows this isn’t my first time trying to make my way through Infinite Jest. and asks me how many pages I’ve read of it this time. I tell her just over three hundred.

“How many pages are in the book?”

“Nine hundred and something, not including footnotes. So I’m about a third of the way through. I’m pretty happy with my progress!”

“Yeah, but you’re not halfway through.”

Marriage.