“Just as children’s skin ages and wrinkles with time, so too do the pages of books. A digital file, on the other hand? When it ages, there’s not much to see- perhaps some extra pixelation, an error message, an out-dated file extension, and then ultimately, nothing at all.” (Cohn, p.67)
Welcome to Winter quarter, it only goes up from here. I am starting with the same text I ended the year with, “Skim, Dive, Surface” by Jenae Cohn . This second chapter entitled “The Held Book” is centered around the question of how our feelings and emotions towards our texts affect the way in which we consume them. I was very excited about this chapter not just because it is so relevant to my ILC but also because my sister is going to school in Scotland studying to be a Librarian/Archivist and has such a fond attachment to her physical books. She has two floor to ceiling bookshelves in our parent’s house that she couldn’t take with her but can’t bear to part with and for good reason, I’ve watched her compile those books over years and years. But as the earlier chapter stated, if she keeps collecting like this, one day she will not have enough physical space to store her books, and how will she pick out the important ones?
All is to say I was excited about this chapter because I had already formed so many ideas from watching my sister. This is not to say I do not enjoy a physical book, I have many I would never part with. But this idea that the way we consume our texts changes the way we think about them or remember them is the exact parallel I am looking for this quarter, the way we consume changes the way we taste, the way we read changes the way we think.
The first half of this reading looked at multiple studies done across various higher learning institutions that asked students their opinions on physical vs digital reading, with most results being that students preferred physical books over digital reading formats. Students are quoted saying they like having a book in their hands, and referred to it as “real reading”.
This chapter also looked at the way our interactions with reaching in early childhood affect our feelings about reading now. I very much liked the quote:
“one source—probably the primary source—of positive reading attitudes is positive
reading experiences. This phenomenon is no more complicated than understanding why someone has a positive attitude toward eggplant. You taste it and like it” (Willingham, 2017, p. 138)
This again is looking at the parallel I want to explore this quarter, and here we have it laid out in the metaphor of an eggplant. In what ways is reading like trying a new food? And as we grow and our tastebuds adapt to adulthood how do our food preferences and reading preferences shift with our maturity? I am exited to finish this reading next week!