["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.
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