By Kerri Havnen Gordon
“Online books are going to replace paper books. Mark my words,” a budding novelist told me with great confidence one day in the year 2000.
Back then it seemed like every farfetched idea here in Silicon Valley was destined to turn to gold. The Internet, the stock market and real estate were enjoying explosive, giddy growth. Witnessing the birth of the millennium further fueled the frenzy of endless possibility in the Valley.
But when the would-be novelist proclaimed that he planned to publish his manuscript online only because the obsolescence of books was the “wave of the future,” I wasn’t buying it.
Yes, the seduction of the Internet is powerful. Information at one’s fingertips continues to entice, and the more information we can readily attain, the shorter our attention spans become. And so we log on and bounce from one Web site to another, reading a little of this, a little of that, soaking it all up.
Well, everything but books, that is. While the Internet is like a really great sampler platter, the book is a leisurely five-course meal to be savored, preferably while reclined. In the face of the Internet, some have feared the fate of the book, but many know well the unmistakable and visceral satisfaction only a book can provide. “I love it when I hear a book binding crack open for the first time,” a woman told me recently. As readers, we dive into the first few pages, ready to be captured, and when we are, it’s a wonderful thing indeed.
Just ask the people who a few weeks ago purchased 8.3 million copies of the last book in the Harry Potter series. Our family accounted for three of those copies, because only my husband was willing to wait to begin Harry’s last adventure.
Over a 27-hour period, I read all 759 pages, and those hours included a good night’s sleep, an hour puttering in my garden and a few short breaks to eat. Such indulgence it was to devote an entire day to a book. “Sorry,” I told a friend who invited me to her beach house that day. “I have a date with Harry!”
My sons, like millions of other teenagers, have grown up with Harry Potter. We discovered the series after the second installment, “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” was published. I was so smitten that I ordered a custom license-plate frame for my minivan, “I’d rather be flying on a Nimbus 2000.” People used to ask me what a Nimbus 2000 was, having never heard of Harry or his broomstick. I’ll bet they have heard plenty about him now.
In those early Harry Potter years, our sons were so young that my husband and I read the books aloud. As the boys matured, so did Harry. And when the central themes became more complex with each successive book, our boys were ready for them.
Author J.K. Rowling wrote that between the young wizard Harry Potter and the evil Lord Voldemort, one must die so that the other may live. I can’t bring myself to believe the same fate of books and the Internet. Because millions of people of all ages happily - eagerly! - detached themselves from the Internet, TVs and video games in favor of hanging out with Harry, there is clearly room for both.
As we watched Harry and the Internet come of age in the past 10 years, it was the Harry Potter series, as much as anything, that proved that real books, made of paper and ink, are here to stay.
