The unwinnable battle.

For the past few days I have been in turmoil. It was over a decision that would change my life, the things I believed in and the way people would view me. Yes, it was regarding my religion. Literature.

More precisely, the topic of reading and books, and my love for one versus my love for the other. You didn't know there existed a difference between the two loves? Me neither, until the creation of ebooks.

To be more comprehensive, it also includes switching over from paper to electronic, because I was thinking of ditching my big and bulky organizer for the Calendar app in iPad, which I can also utilize to download books and read. God, just saying the words "download books" makes me cringe in old-fashioned disgust.

Also might I remind you I am a big, big Apple HATER and to make this purchase would be selling out.

But on to matters of the heart. Books. Paperbacks are my favorite kind. I've always hated hardcovers - I never got the point. I always thought it was purely pretentious, with no economical or convenience sense whatsoever for the avid reader. And those hardcover books with some sort of detachable paper sheath over it? Da fuck? Those were the most annoying, pain-in-the-ass things I've ever had to deal with. Read Nabokov's memoir in a book like that, had to transport it trans-atlantic, and then trans-pacific, cover edges were properly damaged by the time I had the sense to remove them.

So I am anal about my books, yes. I like them the way I like them, and anything more (like large-sized paperbacks won't do too. They can't fit in my purse, or even if they do, I would rather them not) is a sin. So imagine my horror when I found out ebooks were gaining popularity, and Borders was closing down. Does this portend the death of paperback goodness? And more importantly, where was I going to stand on this?

You say, you can easily do both.

No, I say back. You can't. Do you think the Darth Vader calls you over to the dark side, and then say oh maybe you can dabble a little in the Jedi Council, and then come back to the dark side? Oh maybe you can be both?

No. No you can't be. Once you cross over, that's it. You've contributed to the loss of a culture, a way of life, a period of time.

I'm being dramatic, but whatever.

My love for books is real. The way they fit in your hand, so lovingly, waiting to be read; the recycled paper that makes up the pages, the grainy, pulpy feel, so coarse, yellow and imperfect; the matte finish of the cover, feeling the ridges of the book title, running your fingers along it; the spine of the book, so steady and reliable, the thickness of it both a challenge and a delight; how you fall asleep with it splayed open on your chest, or resting on your lap as you check your text messages on a phone, which should remain a phone, and only a phone, and not a device for reading; how sometimes you make a grab for any random object to serve as a bookmark (I am using a bus ticket from my Moscow trip for Miguel Syjuco's Ilustrado); and of course, turning the pages of a real-life book, the sounds of the novel's plot flipping ahead, the smell of a thrill you will soon absorb, the font text so tangible.

All of that replaced by a machine that programs the sounds and actions of pages flipping  to make it seem like you're not living a total lie.

I'm afraid I might be writing an obituary more than anything though, because they have gotten me. These soul-sucking corporate giants have struck right at the heart of book-lovers, at the only thing they could possibly cherish more than books: reading.

The promise of convenience, of having 3,500 books at your fingertips, of having it delivered to you wherever and whenever you want, as opposed to going out to a bookstore or waiting for your Amazon package in the mail, the promise of a much easier device to carry around in our little girl purses, as opposed to War and Peace, the promise of cheaper books, the promise of increased reading due to the convenience of it ... all of this tempts us.

Especially when my body is not exactly built for carrying War and Peace, or any other epic novels, for a long period of time. Or for the transferring of any heavy objects, such as the many, many books that would have piled up by the end of my college years in America. It's a pain in the ass already having so many things to store during the summer, and books are just stacking up by the year. My Dad suggests bringing some books home everytime I made the trans-Pacific journey home, but Daddy! Overweight luggage!

As an English slash Russian Studies slash History student, I have a heavy reading list for each class. I can easily get 5 to 8 books ... per class. I have four, five classes a semester. That makes for 40 books per year, the very minimum, and a whopping 160 in four years. Holy hell.

I am also a sucker for convenience, and if the iPad proves to be a one-stop center for my organizing, reading and Facetime (I am so mad that I'm getting this whole Apple jargon) needs, I might very well get it. It'd be nice to only have to carry one thing, instead of five.

What's annoying is that I didn't think I'd need an iPad until I started creating all these problems for myself. I like my organizer, I like books (as you can see). But now that I know I have the option to not have to carry as many things, I start to want them, and for a brief moment, my life becomes hell as I think about how I don't have them, and how I could have them. Consumerism sucks.

But I don't know. I don't know if I wanna give in to this sick need for convenience and portability. Maybe humans are meant to not have everything in one place, and to think for ourselves what we need, and how we wanna carry our things around. And the more I think about it, the more I can't live with ebooks. The idea of not being able to flip physical pages to get to what I want is a horror ... maybe I will have to ship home my someday, or carry less things in my luggage to make way for these books, to bring them back to my real home. After all, if they're real to me, I can do that for them.

Or I could use ebooks for these years of my life, and switch back once I finally settle down somewhere? But what do I do with all the books that are in my iPad then? Good God, what if my iPad breaks and all my books just disappear forever? But no, God, no! I can't! eBooks are disgusting!

I need to stop.