For the love of a Book

I probably started buying books from Amazon.com very closely after its inception. The convenience was great, you got to browse through thousands of titles in the privacy of your own couch; the newness and novelty of the whole thing was lots of fun; there were other shopping sites but since it was all in its infancy they were limited and Amazon seemed to have gotten it right off the bat especially for someone like me who loves books. When they started adding other "stores" and merchandise I shopped for certain things there also. The prices, selection, and immediacy in receiving your merchandise were pretty much unbeatable therefore hard to resist. Things started to sour for me a few years ago when they introduced the "kindle", their electronic reading device (and I say that with scorn). It wasn't so much the introduction of the thing, after all it is a choice, if one wants to read from an electronic screen fine; who am I to tell you what to do? Me? I'm of the old school variety; I like to feel the weight of the book, the page between my fingers as I turn it, the ability to flip back and forth in mid sentence to verify something I had read earlier, the look of the chosen font. The warm feeling of curling up on my bed, couch, chaise with a book-an electronic device is a tad cold on this. Hell, I need to sit there and read my newspaper every morning and get my fingers ink stained, I even do it in foreign countries where I don't even understand the language. But that's just me, if someone has another preference go right ahead and kindle away. What really irked me about Amazon's kindle roll out was that after a while, maybe a year or so if memory serves, their CEO announced that Kindle would be taking over people's reading preferences in the future and that Amazon would probably eventually phase out all traditional books-I beg your pardon? Do I not live in America, the home of the free and the brave, etc. Don't tell me what to do! or think for that matter. My ire subsided when other things (like life) got in the way and I continued to buy books from Amazon, after all in my mind I thought "never happen, this guy's nuts!". Then last year came the announcement that they were going to start publishing themselves-what??? you're a retailer, what do you know about publishing? By the way, again, you're a retailer not an software company either. They're trying to take over publishing, one of the oldest and most beautiful of industries. I can start listing publishers here that have put together and published some of the most beautiful and heart stopping work...who is Amazon kidding? Then today there was this article in The New York Times, I was floored. When does this strong arming end, when does the greed stop, how much does Jeff Bezos need in his pocket? When is enough enough for this guy? Pulling books???? Is this Fahrenheit 451, 1984? How many companies, or industries do they need to put out of business and destroy? Well, I'm certainly not going to help them. Time for a boycott, or girlcott.

Obras Completas-Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
Pub.
Aguliar, S.A. de Ediciones, Juan Bravo 38
Madrid (Espana), 1969

a gift from my father to my mother of her favorite poet in 1974.

never to be duplicated by Amazon.com publishers.

Thanks for letting me rant-back to regularly scheduled programming soon.