It's nearly the end of Ray Bradbury
week. The aging writer turned 90 on August 22. So three cheers for Bradbury, he's given us a long list of stellar works - with some modern classics like Fahrenheit 451.Indeed he shows little sign of slowing down - he's on the verge of releasing another anthology of short stories.
"E-books smell like burned fuel"
Bradbury is no fan of E-books it seems. Indeed when he's been approached in the past by digital publishing giants he's been rather direct:"I was approached three times during the last year by Internet companies wanting to put my books" on an electronic reading device, he said. "I said to Yahoo, 'Prick up your ears and go to hell. " [source]
Ray Bradbury is also on the record as saying:
"There is no future for e-books, because they are not books," Bradbury said. "E-books smell like burned fuel" [Source]So if you were hoping to read Something Wicked this Way Come
s or Dandelion Wine 
on your Kindle, you might be waiting a while. It's not just e-books though. Bradbury has a fondness, a love for the book and for libraries, and a dislike for modern gadgets and distractions. While Fahrenheit 451 appears to be a criticism of censorship or book burning, Bradbury himself considered it to be a criticism of the way in which television destroyed interest in Literature.Anomalies
What I did find curious though was that his neo-Ludditism did not extend to movies or audiobooks based on his works. Was this simply because these technologies were around ( by which I mean cinema and audio recording) in his youth? Or is it because there is no threat from them to the traditional book?
There are worse crimes than burning books
And according to Bradbury one of those is not reading books in the first place. Which in some respects I find a little contradictory - when he is preventing his work from being read on the Kindle
or the Nook
. The difference between reading Bradbury on an E-ink Screen compared to on paper is a small one. Sure, I like the smell of books, I love bookstores and libraries, but when I sit to read something the outside world dissolves it matters little to me whether I access the book in printed format or in digital format - I am immersed regardless.
Your thoughts?
Logging you in...
Amanda · 760 weeks ago
For a book like Lolita, with its more than a page long paragraphs, and in the Penguin Classic edition I was using, minuscule font, the ereader proved to be a lot easier to read than the real thing.
For other books, such as The Well-Educated Mind, a non-fiction book on reading classics of all genres, ebook reading is much less satisfying because of not being able to flip through and read snippets. Yes, I suppose I could bookmark them, but it's not the same delight as random sampling.
As for Ray Bradbury's thoughts... I wonder if he still writes his manuscripts longhand rather than on a word-processor? I don't think ereaders will ever replace books, but I have to admit, I'm liking mine a whole lot more than I thought I would, and reading on it every day.
SB Wright 110p · 759 weeks ago
I think that E-readers could fulfil a niche with the classics . I can't for example get Anna Karenina at the local library yet I can download it for free via Gutenberg.
Amanda · 759 weeks ago
There's a time and a place for all of these methods of starting fires (although personally, having tried the friction bow, I'll tell you that a flint IS much better!).
I have to take the anthropologist's point of view: humans culture constantly changes and adapts. That's why we're so successful as a species... and why we're stuffing the planet!
My recent post Hop into a Hot Russian Love Affair
SB Wright 110p · 759 weeks ago
But as you say as a species we change and adapt.