A Christmas Kindle

Venture into a cafe or travel on public transport these days and you’re as likely to find people staring at a piece of plastic as you are with their nose in a book. 

E-readers are becoming ever more commonplace; this year, Amazon revealed that sales of books for its Kindle e-reader have been outselling hardbacks.
 
It’s impossible to tell what someone is reading behind the grey, uninspiring casing of an e-reader. These gizmos have spoiled a favourite way to pass the time on a train journey: trying to guess what a stranger is like by their choice of reading.
 
Coloured leather covers for e-readers can’t replace the flourish of colour and design boasted by real books.
 
Aesthetics aside, they have had a more serious impact on book sales generally and charity fundraising in particular. Sales of traditional paper books have declined by 4% in the last year, meaning there are likely to be fewer books around to be donated to worthy causes.
 
With many people likely to be unwrapping a brand new e-reader on Christmas morning, this problem is likely to increase.
 
Donated books earn £21 million a year for Oxfam.  This revenue is quite a considerable contribution towards their aid work to overcome poverty and suffering across the world. Naturally, the decline in sales of traditional paper books is a concern for them.

Oxfam’s Rose Marsh said: “We are conscious that the number of books being purchased new is decreasing. E-readers are increasing in popularity and will continue to do so.”

Rose also points out that e-readers are at the moment only good for fiction; anything with images is better in paper form, which would seem to offer a glimmer of hope for traditional books.

However, it is inevitable that technology will catch up within a couple of years and offer books across every genre in all their glory.
 
As you’d expect, Oxfam takes a proactive approach to deal with a risk to a rich source of income.
 
They support the book trade, as they need them to sell new books for people to buy and then donate when they have finished with them.
 
The charity also asks people who have bought an e-reader to donate their physical books to them.
 
Rose continued: “There are plenty of books out there. We are looking at ways to make it easier to donate.”
 
Oxfam has been encouraging people to give their unwanted books a new home through the annual books donation drive and promoting donations at work. An incredible 30,000 second-hand books were donated at this year’s Hay Festival.

Besides helping good causes, charity shops are an excellent way to help feed a reading habit without breaking the bank.

Unwanted gifts often find their way there, meaning you can often nab a book, still in pristine condition, for a fraction of the RRP.  Recent bargains include a hardback book for a mere £2.
 
I am a voracious reader; being hungry for a good read makes trips to bookshops expensive. Of course, I have my favourite authors, but love making new discoveries.

For me, part of the pleasure of buying a new book is to be found in browsing and having a cover catch your eye. I’m unconvinced that pressing a button to download a new addition to an e-reader offers such a level of satisfaction.
 
Being unable to leave a bookshop empty-handed means I have quite an extensive collection of books, of nearly every genre. I love the range of colour offered by their spines stacked alongside each other. The rather high ‘to read’ pile offers a thrill of anticipation.

E-readers are changing the way we treat books. If I’ve enjoyed a book and think a friend will also like it, I share it with them.
 
Downloads can’t be handed around; your friend will have to purchase the book if they are going to share your recommendation.

That’s good for the publishing houses and the economy, but bad for the time-honoured tradition of sharing literature amongst fellow book lovers.

Books I don’t enjoy get another chance at life by being donated to a local charity shop.  With an e-reader, your only option is to hit ‘delete’ to make space for more deserving titles. That seems quite wasteful.
 
I’m not a complete Luddite; I can see that e-readers have their advantages. Investing in one means you will no longer have to risk exceeding your baggage allowance because of a stash of holiday reading, or weigh down your bag on a train trip.
 
The decline of books is disheartening.  However, while technology is changing the way we buy and deal with books, my hope is that the resulting portability of literature will help more people discover a love of reading.

A final thought: if all your reading is now on an e-reader or tablet, spread a bit of Christmas cheer by having a de-clutter and donate your unwanted books to your local charity shop.

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The Nature of Modern Friendship

Our busy lives mean that maintaining friendships often slides down the list of priorities.

Social media such as Facebook and Twitter have helped define the nature of modern friendship. Experts have said that people now spend too long in front of their computers with virtual friends, instead of socialising.

I see it differently: our time today is often too tight to enable us to have regular, proper catch-ups with our friends. Facebook and Twitter enable us to slip in and out of each other’s lives, catching up as you go. They’ve helped me to maintain more friendships that I might otherwise have.

I’ve travelled the world and have friends who live in all four corners of the globe. It’s no longer necessary to make time for the ritual of getting out the thin blue Airmail paper to write my news. My far-flung friends are able to keep up with each others’ lives with regular snippets of news and photographs. It’s all for the better, as not many of us have the chance to sit down and write that long letter. However, that does take away the thrill of the arrival of a letter bearing an exotic stamp.

The internet even enables us to befriend people we might otherwise not have met. My partner Martin collects American sports memorabilia and made friends with an Yank on an online forum. The friendship was sparked by Chris, the American, asking Martin why a Brit had such a pastime. This year, Chris and his family were holidaying in Europe, giving us the opportunity to meet up, as well as giving Martin and I the excuse to have a much-needed city break.

Colleagues had a great time thinking dreaming up all sorts of grisly fates that would no doubt await us in meeting our internet friends, because, after all, everyone knows the internet is full of weirdos, but I’m pleased to report it all worked out well. The ever-shrinking global village helped us make some fabulous new friends.

While online forums help us share common hobbies with people across the world, the internet also provides a virtual shoulder to cry on with people who know what you’re going through. Real-life friends can offer support with a glass of wine, but the forums offer an additional crutch.

We share lots of personal information with our friends, but how much personal information should we share on these sites? You have to think whether you put your life out there for work colleagues, acquaintances and family members with whom you might normally not share so much. Would you mind your boss or your mum seeing photos of you on a drunken night out?

Social media can mean saying goodbye to a fair amount of privacy in our private lives, no matter how circumspect we try to be.

                 

Just as social media helps us maintain friendships in the face of hectic schedules, the nature of modern friendship presents complexities for dealing with friendships you no longer want. We’ve all had friendships that have fizzled out. In the olden days, the friendship would just have faded away, but technology presents us with a new dilemma: do you defriend them?

‘Defriending’ people isn’t as simple as clicking a button, as psychologist Sue Jamison-Powell has found. She says that being ‘defriended’ may have more in common with losing a lover.

Sue said: “In real-life friendships, there is the possibility of allowing friendships to drift into acquaintanceships. On many social networking sites, however, it is only possible to have people as a 'friend' or not.

“This makes online friendships something more like romantic relationships, which we tend to view in an either/or way: either we are in a relationship or we are not.”

It’s important to keep it all in perspective. The way we see friendships today may have changed, but that shouldn’t change the way we treat our friends.

‘Liking’ a status can never replace a proper catch up over a glass (or two) of wine.