Adaption: What Happens When All the Book-Books Are Gone

As Read an E-Book Week ends, journalist, columnist and editor Mireille Silcoff ponders the question: “What happens to lovers of ink when the e-book takes over for good?” From the National Post:

Every week, I read The New York Times Book Review and ever since they instituted those little grey-on-grey pie charts showing what percentage of bestsellers were bought as books and what percentage as e-books, I feel a drop in my belly which I interpret as my body’s physical reaction to the sight of the happy-tinted world as I know and love it being swallowed up by more darkly shaded forces that I do not welcome.

Silcoff’s vision gets not cheerier and is tainted by the fact that, for her, this is a road that’s been traveled before:

I think my issue in adaption is that I can’t get easily over what’s been forfeited. Take music. I was a pop-music journalist in the era when recorded sound still came in material form. I had hundreds of records and thousands of CDs and mixes from DJs that were like diamond-encrusted gold to me. I had friends who worked in places like record stores and at distributors and friends who did the things that serviced the stores and the distributors, and now all of that is gone. The consolation of convenience doesn’t, in my mind, in any way make up for the loss of a subculture, or an industry, not to mention many of my best and hottest years.

Silcoff’s piece is part personal lament, part cultural query and -- whether or not you agree with her ideas, this is writing worth reading, and it’s here.