Guest Columns
“Is the Book Dead?”
In a talk at the El Cerrito Library, Chronicle book editor and El Cerrito resident John McMurtrie discussed the importance of books and explained why they will never disappear.
All of us who love to read books or who are involved in the writing, editing, design and manufacture of books have been watching the development of digital publishing with a mix of fear and excitement. We worry that the book as a physical object may disappear, replaced by a Kindle, an iPad or an ugly-named contraption like a Kobo or a Blio. And we fear that consumers of long-form writing will simply die out, replaced by New Gen youth who will still read, thank goodness, but only if what they read is no more than one screen long. I’ve been watching developments, too, because I am a book publisher. So it was with special interest that I went to a talk on the evening of Thursday, May 19, by John McMurtrie, editor of the San Francisco …
Kyrsten Bean
10:24 am on Saturday, June 4, 2011
Nice article -- a topic I ponder often. The physical form of the book (as you mentioned scrolls from the past, too) will certainly change as the world changes. We live in a great new time. A love of reading goes back far in time and it's not going to go away if we all can help it. (The Book of the Dead, for one, was written on papyrus.) I love books in their physical form, but since witnessing … more ›