Josh Getzler
In a couple of hours, my wife and I will be loading our middle daughter onto a bus that will take her to Paradise in the Berkshires for the next month. It’s her first year at sleep-away camp, so she’s only going for a month, though given the opportunity she would have left the day after school ended and come home September 1. Our other two children talk about whether we’ll try to buy the apartment next to ours in order to give them places to live when they get older; this one says she’ll post updates from California on Facebook.
I remembered, as we were helping her pack (actually as my wife and I packed and my daughter discussed with her sister which of the Bieber posters would look best over her bunk), that when I went away for the summer, figuring out what to read was a Thing. It was a combination of what I was required to read from school, what I had started just before I was supposed to leave, what would signify to the other kids that I was not a dork even though I read—a lot. I remember going to an outdoors-y camp in the middle of nowhere and bringing ONLY Lord of the Rings--figuring it would take me the month to get through them--then having to write begging my folks to include some Agatha Christie in their package with the sweatshirt and extra underwear when I realized I simply was never going to appreciate LOTR no matter how many times I tried, and was going to memorize the months-old Creem magazine I'd brought if they didn't send reinforcements. And I remember frying my body next to a pool in Israel because I couldn’t stop reading O Jerusalem. And I remember five of us, boys and girls alike, sneaking out near the lake at Camp Redwood in 1978 because Beth Wachtel had her older sister’s well-thumbed copy of Forever and we’d all HEARD about it…
Which brings me back to last night. I guess the thing that made me happy was that my daughter did in fact WANT me to give her books, that she intended to read during Flashlight time (funny that what used to be illicit is now mandated!), and that what she wanted was books. But in this case, the interesting part was that we were loading Monster High, Dork Diaries and Who was Queen Elizabeth (prep for late August England trip) into her hand-me-down first generation Kindle. And that it was normal.
Our kids are 8, 9, and 12. They have bookshelves full to bursting with printed books, and e-readers loaded with electronic editions (frequently duplicating what’s on their shelves, Dan Gutman and Andrew Clements and Judy Blume will be happy to know—though not Forever, as far as I know!). They are happy to pick up a printed book and are comfortable navigating their way through the menus. They spend hours every week at Barnes & Noble, but also get a real thrill out of the ability to push a button and have a book appear.
They are a transition generation, as mine was with computers, and it will be interesting for me to see what their apartments will look like—will they need to place a premium on wall space for bookshelves, as my wife and I did every time we moved? Or will built-in bookshelves go the way of milk crates filled with LPS or CD racks? My brother-in-law the techie says he sees it happening by 2020. I see it taking longer (but that’s another column).
I look at my daughter’s duffel bag with her sleeping bag, sunscreen, ponytail holders, box of already-addressed envelopes for letters to her parents, grandparents and BFFs (no emails allowed) and Bieber posters (sigh). The Kindle (with the name tag taped to the back) is perched on top of it. I hope she doesn’t drop it in the lake. But I also hope she takes it there.
