Why Some People Will Never Use E-Readers

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published December 1, 2025] 2025

Recently I read an article about the personality traits of people who still read physical books instead of e-books. Even before I read the first word, I was willing to go wild and crazy and surmise that those would be positive traits and that the author was likely a physical book reader herself.

Of course, if this article had been written by either of my strictly-digital-reading sons, I would guess that those personality traits would include "Luddite", "techno-moron", "change-averse", "retro"  and the ever-popular "tree killer".

And actually, all of those terms would be true.

Now that I'm retired, I read at least three books a week, the vast majority of them from my always-full public library queue. The front seat of my car has library books being transported to and from the library pretty much at all times.

Being able to read so many books is definitely a corrective emotional experience from my twelve years as a divorced working mom when I read exactly no books a year. I mean, zee-ro. I didn't even bother with a library card since they unreasonably wouldn't let you keep a book out for twelve months (years?) at a time. There used to be library fines and mine would have looked like the defense budget.

So I'd buy a book from Warwick's which would reside on my bedside table with hopes that over time I'd have enough time or energy to actually read it. But I never got past the first page. In that era, I was so chronically exhausted that I was usually asleep before my head had even hit the pillow.

I'm just glad I lived long enough to make up for all those books I never got to read. My engineer husband Olof reads both e-books and physical books. He likes novels on his e-reader but thinks the graphics are better in those massive 1,200-page techno-tomes he inexplicably considers pleasure reading. As for me, I just like the tactile feel of an actual book in my lap.

According to the article about physical book readers, the traits we have (as opposed to you unctuous e-reader people) are (allegedly): we're self-aware, empathic, imaginative, self-disciplined, reflective, thoughtful, deeply emotional, poetic, and introspective. 

Actually, I can simplify that list. If it requires instructions and/or batteries, we're not interested.

I read the list of qualities of physical book readers to my husband and asked if he thought these traits described me. When I got to "deeply emotional", he queried, "So like hurling f-bombs at your electronics?"   OK, I admit it. I am not only techno-disabled but have the frustration of a gnat. It seems like the only reasonable response when technology thwarts me. Which it seems to do pretty continuously.

Seriously, everything has gotten so much more complicated than it needs to be. Even my new stove required a 60-page manual of instructions. It doesn't even get to "bake"  until page 40. The stove I had when I first married had two knobs, one marked "Off-Bake-Broil"  and the other temperatures. (The pre-heat setting, not indicated, was waiting 15 minutes.) I still think of that stove incredibly fondly.

I have seen first-hand that I am not the only physical book aficionado out there. Never was this illustrated more eloquently than on March 14, 2020 when the Covid epidemic hit and the library announced it would be closing the next day until further notice. The Riford library on Draper looked like a literary Luddite Fall of Saigon. There was wholesale panic. The place was packed. The librarians were frantically dispensing plastic grocery bags and allowing patrons to check out up to 40 books although I don t think anyone was actually counting. Like everyone else, I was dumping books wholesale into my bags according to two criteria which were (1) it had a cover and (2) there were words inside.

During the pandemic, books were assumed to be carrying Covid cooties so there was no way to return them during the long library closure. They rode around in the trunk of my car for months waiting to be repatriated with the mothership. 

Covid generated a new DSM-5 category: "People Who Will Just Not Use E-Readers No Matter What."  (There is no vaccine for this.)

Fortunately, a lot of those neighborhood Little Libraries popped up during that time when people could exchange books. They were a godsend. I was pawing through them at every opportunity.

From time to time, we techno-hostile people actually prevail. Olof and I like to sit outside on summer evenings and read, he on his iPad or e-reader, and me with a library book. Occasionally, Olof will have to go in early because the iPad's low battery sensor is flashing. I try to look sympathetic but it's all I can do to stifle a snicker. I never have to worry about the battery on my library book getting too low.

"You don't have to look so smug,"  my techno-husband will say, heading indoors.

But I can't help myself. I just want to sit outside for as long as I want to with a nice glass of wine and an actual book that makes a soothing susurrus when you turn the pages. No charging necessary.

 

 

 

Even More Things To Be Thankful About This Year

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published November 24, 2025] 2025

Last year at Thanksgiving, I wrote a column thanking my parents for all the things that I didn't even know to thank them for when they were alive. A year later and a new political era, the list has grown even longer.

I've covered in previous columns that I am a fourth-generation feminist and Democrat married to a life-long Republican, although Olof and I have both voted across party lines on many occasions. It's a dynamic that feels very familiar to me. My father was a conservative Republican and my mother a liberal feminist Democrat. It made for a lot of lively, but respectful, dinner table conversation at our house.

Conversations are pretty lively at our dinner table too but in the current era, for different reasons entirely. Olof and I have never been more politically aligned. My husband is still fervently hoping the Republican party will return to what he thinks of as its former glory. I, of course, think it never had one. We both feel failed by the parties we have supported our whole lives. But we are both committed to voting even on the occasions our votes cancel each other out. (Prop 50 was a recent example.)

Both of my parents were avid community volunteers. My father ran the United Fund campaign in our area and we referred to ourselves as United Fund orphans during the major fundraising season.

My mother's occupations, meanwhile, included teaching convicts at an area penitentiary, substitute teaching junior high (is there a parallel there?) and leading Brownies and Girl Scouts. But the one she was most passionate about was not only teaching ESL (English as a second language) but tutoring, on her own time, many of her students to pass the written driver s exam which in that era had to be taken in English. Given the lack of public transit in our area, a driver s license was essential to getting any kind of good job. Her efforts included teaching them to drive in our car. I think my mother could yell STOP! in eight languages.

Having immigrants regularly in our house meant that we kids got to learn about other cultures, and the challenges they faced surviving in a new land without knowing the language. It was one of the most valuable educations I've ever had. I've never known people who worked harder

It was largely from this immigrant influence that I was inspired to apply for a student exchange program to spend my senior year of high school in a foreign country which is, in fact, where I met my now-husband, Olof, who was a fellow student on the same program in Brazil.

As a total aside on the immigrant issue, I recently met a young woman who volunteered, in a conversation about illegal aliens being deported, that her ethnicity was White Mountain Apache. I had never heard of this tribe of some 12,000 native Americans mostly residing in a reservation in Arizona. Not surprisingly, her sardonic view was that the 342 million current Americans all fall into the illegal alien category.

I'm writing this column on November 11 - Veteran s Day - and realized that last year I failed to thank all the people in my family who have served in the military, including my current husband, Olof, who was an Air Force pilot for ten years. Even my first husband served two years as a Navy doctor under the Berry Plan (which was how we ended up in San Diego in the first place).

My father served in the Army Air Forces (now the Air Force) in World War II; my husband Olof s father as a Navy pilot in the Pacific an incredibly high-hazard assignment. Even my grandfather served in the US Army in World War I. All of these men were clear in their mission and put their lives on the line for it.

My father and Olof s were among sixteen million fellow Americans who served in the U.S. Armed Forces during the Second World War, 407,000 of whom lost their lives in the process. It just seems that saying "thank you for your service", however well intended, doesn't begin to acknowledge the sacrifices that so many men and women have made to keep this country a democracy. I am especially grateful this year.

My parents, like everyone else, were flawed people making their share of mistakes. My mother, a smoker, died of lung cancer at 54. My father, like most of the neighbor men, could have done with fewer martinis. But there were three things I think my parents did extremely well.

Top among the things I am grateful to them for: they didn't hate. Whatever their prejudices might have been, we never heard them. They never referred to anyone by race or religion, and to this day, when I hear gratuitous (or even flat-out biased) references to people based on these factors, it immediately stands out to me in a very sad way.

Secondly, I consider one of the major gifts they gave their children was the concept that people could disagree, that over respectful - I can t emphasize the word enough - debate, ones view of the world could evolve and change. But you had to be willing to listen. And to vet your information to the best of your ability. And then: make your case.

And finally, one of the concepts my parents emphasized that seems especially important in current times involves the philosophy that what you accept, you teach. I'm guessing I'm not the only person who still talks to their dead relatives, but I can  put myself at our dinner table and hear them, if they were still alive, soliciting our opinions on the current state of affairs, and asking us: is this what you want? And if not, speak up.

So on this Thanksgiving Day, thank you Mom and Dad, and all the family members who have served to protect this country. I so appreciate all of you.

 

Inga's All-Time Favorite Quotes

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published November 10, 2025] 2025

Over the years, I've been collecting favorite quotes way too many to list here. I first published this list in March of 2018 and got such a huge response to it that I like to run an updated version of it every few years with new additions. As before, some of these quotes seem truly prescient for their time especially the first four:

"In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take." - Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)

"The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there."   First line of the book The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley. (1953)

"You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts."  - Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003), and others

"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." - Journalist A.J. Liebling

"I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that don't work."  Thomas Edison

"The older you get, the better you get. Unless you re a banana."  - Late actress Betty White

"Things always get worse before they get a lot worse."  - Lily Tomlin

"If you're the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room."  Attributed to various leaders

"The road of life is paved with flat squirrels who couldn't decide."   (Unknown)

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." William Faulkner

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Thomas Watson (1874-1956), Chairman of IBM, 1943

"My body isn't me. I just live here."   (Magnet on Inga s refrigerator)

"Most editors are failed writers. So are most writers." T.S. Eliot

"A drug is any substance that, when injected in a rat, gives rise to a scientific paper."   - Darryl Inaba (1984)

"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now."    Chinese Proverb

"We never wanted to divorce at the same time."  Reply from friends of Inga s when asked the secret of their 50-year marriage 

"Not having to worry about your hair anymore may be the secret upside of death."   - Nora Ephron

"In our judicial system, you are assumed guilty until proven rich or lucky."   Pundit John Oliver 

A scientist friend who was invited to present at a professional meeting in Jakarta observed to the organizer that the schedule, as set, was not being even remotely followed. The reply: "You should think of the schedule more as a first draft of a play that will be given improvisationally.

"The only way to be reliably sure the hero gets the girl at the end of the story is to be both the hero and the girl."  - Becoming Duchess Goldblatt, A Memoir

"A closed mouth gathers no feet."   - Inga s personal motto, poorly followed 

"What you accept, you teach."   - Inga s parents motto, well followed.

"The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."     George Bernard Shaw

"May you step on Legos in the middle of the night."    Curse

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."  - Thomas Edison

"I've had a wonderful time, but this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx (1895-1977)

"A lot of people ask me if I were shipwrecked and could only have one book, what would it be? I always say, How to Build a Boat." Actor Stephen Wright

"I have never killed anyone, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction." - Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)

"After a failure, there's always someone who wished there was an opportunity they'd missed."  - Lily Tomlin

"All swash and no buckle."   - variation on "all hat and no cattle"

"I am not young enough to know everything." - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time." - Vince Lombardi

"There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher." - Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)

"My brain seems to be working for a different organization now."   (Inga s friend Julia referring to menopause)

"If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door." - Milton Berle

"The wages of sin are death, but after taxes are taken out, it s just kind of a tired feeling."    Paula Poundstone.

"Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure." - Mystery writer Ross MacDonald (1915-1983)

"The chief cause of problems is solutions."    Journalist Eric Sevareid (1912-1992)

"Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken."  - Oscar Wilde

"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough." - Mario Andretti

"Happiness is good health and a bad memory." - Ingrid Bergman (1917-1982)

 

When Your Family - And Dog - Keep Switching Food Preferences

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published November 3, 2025] ©2025

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve pretty much become a confirmed lacto-ovo-pesci-clucko-heifertarian.  Which is to say, no pork or veal. And truthfully, the heifertarian part is increasingly rare.  But every once in a while, I just have to indulge in a hamburger although working hard at not thinking of the bovine who gave its life for this. I’m truly sorry, cow.  But boy are you delicious.

While I think I’m a pretty flexible eater, accommodating family members’ dietary preferences – which now includes five grandchildren – has been a challenge.  For years, I tried to keep up with whatever brands of yogurt and peanut butter and bread the grandkids would consume.  Fortunately, as they’ve gotten older, they’ve become far less picky.

My older granddaughter is still the toughest.  She’s currently a vegetarian (mostly vegan) with the exception of … hotdogs. Yup, seriously.  She’s a vegan-BallParkFrankian. This is definitely a niche dietary category. 

As the family shopper, I always did my best to stock my husband and sons’ preferred foods and beverages, only to have them change those preferences without informing me.  And I confess, even the dog did (and still does) it.

It’s bad enough to have a pantry full of food from your usual market that no one is eating anymore.  But if it came from another market to which you made a special trip to acquire it, it makes the household shopper positively surly.

I am sure I am not alone in this.

My husband, Olof, for example, seems to go through cycles of favorite snack foods.  For a while, he preferred unsalted roasted almonds that, given the quantity in which he was consuming them, were really only available in those bulk bins at Sprouts. 

So I’d buy up to ten pounds at a time and transfer them to plastic containers and store them in the freezer.  They take up a fair amount of room but usually he was eating them at a sufficient pace that there would quickly be room for other freezables, like the dog’s homemade food.  She’s an incredibly picky eater and has, at 16, a delicate stomach.

So after a while, I’m noticing that there still seem to be ten pounds of almonds in the freezer, and they aren’t moving. 

“So, Olof,” I say, “what’s with the almond situation? You don’t seem to be eating them.”

And Olof replies, “Yeah, I’m kind of tired of them.  Would you start getting unsalted mixed nuts instead?”

Alas, unsalted mixed nuts went the way of roasted almonds.  Then he was on to tortilla chips and fresh salsa.  But I now know pretty much every recipe you can make with ten pounds of rejected almonds, and an abandoned cannister of unsalted nuts.  Pestos! Brownies! Crusted fish!

A few months into the snack chip phase, I couldn’t help but notice that the current opened bag of tortilla chips had gone stale, and the container of fresh salsa had expired.  I ended up dumping both.  Olof had moved on to sliced cheese.

“Olof, min lilla lutfisk,” I said, “would it be at all possible to indicate to the family shopper – that would be moi - when your food preferences have changed? Because the family shopper lacks clairvoyance but is finding herself increasingly aggravated at the lack of communication skills in this family.” 

When my sons were growing up, and even in their adult years, keeping up with what they’d eat – and drink – seemed to be a constantly changing tableau as well.  School lunches would start coming home uneaten. For a long time, Henry would only eat sandwiches made from cold cuts from a certain deli (not, of course, the one at your local supermarket.)

Keeping up with Henry’s beer preferences over the years has also been a losing battle.  Whatever I have in stock is the beer (IPA?) he used to drink.  So I make a note for the next visit. But by that time, he’s already moved on.

I have to admit, even the dog does it.  No, not change beer preferences.  She’s a confirmed teetotaler. She’ll suddenly refuse to eat whatever she’d been eating, so I try her on something else to find something else she likes.  Then I go ahead an order a case of it (minimum order) which she decides she doesn’t like when we are halfway through it.

I’ve tried making homemade food for her as well which, like the canned stuff, she likes until she doesn’t.  But since it is labor intensive to make, I end up with a freezer shelf full of containers of food she won’t eat.  Fortunately, I finally got rid of all the damned almonds so at least there’s room for it. 

But I really wouldn’t mind having room in the modest freezer section of my side-by-side refrigerator for actual food. 

OK, I admit I’m an enabler.  But like most moms, it’s built into our ego systems to want to take care of our families, and even our incredibly picky dog, and have their preferred sustenance on hand.

I’m thinking I should start a Rejected Food Bank with other moms in my area.  We could all post the stuff our families have stopped eating and exchange it for something our own family might. Because I got really, really tired of pesto.