Pointless Ramblings about the Internet, Books and eBooks

**Warning totally random entry** This is the type of thing I used to just write in my journal, but now I get to put it out there for you to suffer through**


The great thing about the Internet is there is so much out there for free. I have found web sites that will print free return address labels and send them to you. I have written about all the blogs I read with tons of free directions on how to cook, sew, paint. No wonder books are said to be obsolete by 2020. We don't have to buy how to books anymore, it is all on the web. Books, real books are too expensive when I can purchase an eBook/iBook for less,and it takes up less space or even better, find what I need for free from someone who is willing to share what they know for nothing. Google Books even says they are trying to scan and post every book ever written.

This weekend we are planning to move a second table into my craft room/our guest bedroom. I love my space and have also added a craft table for Claire because if I am cutting, pasting and sewing, she wants to also. But what is easily over looked are the 15 plus boxes of books that are patiently waiting for a home. A home to be built whenever Brent has the time. That is a whole other blog entry, but my point (if there is one) is books, 15 boxes of books taking up space in our guest room that have not been read for as long as we have been married. So we looking at the space where the table will be set and Brent starts thinking about the books. We have at least 3 boxes of encyclopedias that Brent picked up from his mother's house. He asks, "What should we do with these?" like I asked for them and packed them up to bring home. But seriously, what are we going to do with them? I don't really want to get rid of them. We never could have afforded to buy a new set encyclopedias. Honestly though, who uses them at all? Even in schools they are are getting dusty. By the time they are printed and distributed they are outdated.

Besides the encyclopedias, most of boxes are filled with engineering books that belonged to Brent's dad and grandfather. Old Books, sentimental books, outdated books, books I am not trying to get rid of. However, these books make me think. I have some books I have read and reread. Like these old engineering books that Brent hopes to pass down, I hope someday Claire will pick up my old Little House on the Prairie books and share my love for them or open up and find a five dollar bill I will hide in To Kill A Mockingbird, just like my Aunt Laura did.

I have one of my Grandmother Boenig's bibles. The cover has completely come off and the table of contents is long gone. But through out the margins are notes. My Grandmother's thoughts. In Revelation on a passage about the anti-Christ, a simple question, "Hitler?" I wouldn't get rid of this bible for a thousand eBooks or a digital free copy.

The superintendent of my school district recently sent out an article listing all the things that will be gone from classrooms by 2020. Paperback books made the list. This article has stirred up quite a few passionate teachers at my campuses who argue that books with never go away. I sure hope not. Who wants to soak in a bubble bath with a Kindle? Even though I am a Technology Integration Specialist, I am saddened by the thought. However, I see, I read, I know what is going on. Public libraries are being used less and less, they are loosing funding. Publishers are loosing money printing hard back books unless they make the top ten list. It won't be that anyone wants books to go away. Across the world books will become what they once were: expensive and only for the churches, universities and the top tier of society who can afford them. Kindles, Sony Readers and the like will advance to where they are not only read on the screen, but able to be projected onto bathroom walls to be enjoyed during bubble baths or on to the back of seats on buses and airplanes. New systems of writing in, marking up and turning down corners will be created. Do you want to write in the margins of an eBook? Tab a page that you want to remember? It will happen. It will become part of your eBook to have and refer to, to pass on to friends. Will we miss the smell of a book? The touch of the pages? Some teachers have said they will miss it. Will I? Probably (I don't even own a Sony Reader). But my grandkids won't. They won't know what they are missing.