Reading on my phone

I've always been kind of attached to print books: I collect them, I love the way that they get worn in as you make your way through the text, and I like knowing that the print copy is mine as long as I want it (unless I sell it, loan it to someone, or lose it in a fire or flood). As a librarian and scholar, I also like the permanence of the printed book. I spend a lot of time trying to track down sources that no longer exist or were never collected. Thinking about future researchers, I want some sort of insurance that future researchers will have the materials that they need, and the printed book feels like a kind of promise.

On my most recent vacation, however, I discovered that I also love reading on my phone. Reading on my phone has other kinds of satisfaction: I can try out a multitude of books without having to lug them all in my luggage; I always have a book with me (because I *always* have my phone); and I don't need a light to read when we're all crammed into a tent in the middle of nowhere. As long as I have a connection, I don't have to worry about running out of books.

This is a change in attitude that has been coming on for a long time, and it's most closely tied to travel. Every time I go on a trip, I try to anticipate what I'm going to want to read. And I always guess wrong, mostly because my judgement is muddied by aspirational thinking as I try to select a book that is both enjoyable and professionally useful. Since my field is 19th-century literature, over the years I've stuffed my luggage with a lot of long, generally sentimental novels that I never quite feel like reading once I'm stuck on a plane.

On the other hand, I never try to be serious when I'm picking books to read on my phone. My first choice was P.D. James's *Death Comes to Pemberley,* a book that I *had* to read. Next was Rowling's pseudonymous *Cuckoo's Calling,* an indulgence that got me through a flight from LA to Detroit. Once I discovered that I can borrow Kindle books through my public library, I was hooked. On my most recent vacation, I ignored the modernist novel that I had dutifully brought along and indulged in chick lit and cozies.

This is not to say that I'm leaving print books behind entirely. Phone reading is best for light, beachy reads, and that's not my life most of the time. It's also kind of hard on your eyes to read on the phone (that's not so much the case on my iPad, but the kids are usually too busy playing video games on it). I also think that the phone isn't the place for the kind of reading that I do in my scholarly work, where I'm reading more closely, re-reading, absorbing, processing, and often annotating.

Of course, I have just discovered annotating software...