Home » What does a digital book taste like – Guido Vitiello

What does a digital book taste like – Guido Vitiello

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What does a digital book taste like – Guido Vitiello

Dear bibliopathologist,
I am a paper addict, but I am intrigued by digital but there is one thing that holds me back: using digital readers I would not have the physical perception of “where I am in the book”. With the bookmark or the corner of the page folded I can see if I have reached the middle, if I am about to finish, or if I still have a lot of reading waiting for me. And depending on the case it can be a positive or negative feeling, however reassuring … Should I try to let myself go to indefiniteness and surprise?

– Giovanna (a reader who needs certainties)

Dear Giovanna,
you tell me that you need certainties, and nothing is more reassuring than the contemplation of someone else’s stupidity. Well, hear this and pity me. Twenty years ago, at a time when I often buried myself in the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, I made an exciting discovery in the cafeteria: the ideal drink for study afternoons! I also wanted it in Italy, and I felt like Hernán Cortés who imports tomatoes in the old continent. My girlfriend at the time, who was studying with me, was not as thrilled by the discovery. “It’s instant coffee,” she told me yawning. “It already exists in Italy. For decades “.

The frustration of my colonial and philanthropic dreams did not stop me from drawing a more general lesson from the episode. If I had been told immediately that it was instant coffee, I reasoned, I would have drunk it with espresso in mind, and with every sip I would have compared it to its rival. And I probably would have given the same verdict that many give: it’s a soup. Instead, drinking it without terms of comparison and without expectations, instant coffee conquered me. The same goes for ebooks. We should not treat them as paper books without paper, but as something else. The point is: do you like the taste of this other thing? And would you pour an espresso coffee into a cup of instant coffee paper?

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Two conversions
To solve the problem you are talking about – not having the physical perception of what you are missing at the end – obviously the percentages of progress and the hypothetical calculation of the remaining minutes of reading are not enough. You need to be able to feel a defined thickness under your fingertips, which we mentally convert into the currency of time: the time of life (how much we have to read) and the time of the story (how much remains to live for the characters of the novel). The two conversions belong to different orders, and the second has to do with the narrative structure, with our competence as readers, with the promises and expectations of that invisible pact that the novel made us sign. When there are a few pages left, our mind goes into “final” mode, a bit like when we are on a plane and the pilot announces the start of the descent. We will read those pages differently.

There is a monologue by Jerry Seinfeld that I find very illuminating in this regard. It concerns television, but it can also be extended to novels:

The novel, in its most canonical form, unlike our lives, has a clear beginning, a predictable end, and a meaning. And to align our mental times with narrative times, it is useful to be able to weigh the pages that remain to be read. When we float between the screens of a digital book, this little ritual that has been cultivated for centuries is turned upside down. And if we can’t get the comparison with our paper books out of our minds, we naturally think: it’s a soup. Like instant coffee, like life.

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