Ebooks v. Cigarettes

 

Tuesday, Aug 13, 2013

 Salon                   

                                                                             

How would George Orwell, calculate his modern day expenses in the post paperback age?

By Kaya Genç

                                  

                      

Enlarge (Credit: via Wikipedia)

This article originally appeared on the L.A. Review of Books.

 

                                   A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO I walked into a bookshop in a shopping mall in central Istanbul. As I browsed the shelves I was unaware that the day marked the 110th anniversary of the birth of George Orwell. Though Orwell is one of my favorite English authors, my mind was occupied by quite a different fact — namely, that since buying a tablet computer in December last year, the amount of money I have spent on printed books has decreased dramatically. With this decrease followed a decrease in the pleasure I took from purchasing them. In the good, old, and expensive days of literary shopping I would choose books from the shelves, walk to the counter, pay in cash, and head to a coffee shop with my purchases — the favorite ritual of my teenage years. I would open the first book’s cover, accompanied by a cigarette and a cup of strong Turkish coffee. These would always be very physical experiences: I remember the crinkling pages, the waft of the smoke, the oils of the coffee. Afterward my hands smelled of nicotine; my mind hungered for more books.

 

Lately, however, this ritual has all but disappeared from my life. My reading materials have been thoroughly digitized. I have lost touch with both the printed book and the banknote. In the long chronicle of my reading habits I am currently living through the age of the .EPUB file and the plastic card. It is a chilly period, I must admit, a dark age, and at times it makes me yearn for the good old days of my undergraduate life. In those not-so-distant days I didn’t need to calculate or economize. I didn’t have to pay the rent; as for my insurance premiums, they were taken care of by my parents. Thanks to them I could spend all my money on books and cigarettes, giving little thought to the price I paid for them.

Engulfed in this nostalgia, I decided to break from my current habits. I purchased a couple of print magazines and books: the last issue of The New York Review of Books cost me 30 liras (around 15 U.S. dollars — I am not sure why it is so expensive here), and the Penguin Great Ideas edition of Orwell’s Books v. Cigarettes went for £5. The book was beautifully designed, with a cigarette stub circled by an ashtray that reminded me of my teenage years. I immediately fell in love with it. Paying for a text I knew I could find for free on Project Gutenberg only served to increase the pleasure.
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