Post #2: What is a book?

What is a book?

   A book is an old boat. A small thing with fading colors and bindings.  It takes you to the places you can only imagine, by traveling on top of a calm sea created by an Author’s dreams and a Publisher’s effort. It’s comfy, but cumbersome and venerable. The alternative, pages created by digital displays, shown on flashy sheets of sleek alloys.  These eBooks and other digital copies are airplanes when being compared to the old boat. They zoom from place to place and jump between the bodies of water the old boat sails on. They hold much more than a single book and often offer cheaper deals. Now many see the idea of taking a boat simply outrageous as it can only bob on one body of water, while the airplane offers convenience and speed. To walk to a book store and purchase a book at a greater cost seems foolish when one must simply press the download button on their tablet. However, you miss the smell of books and the kind person at the counter who recommends the next novel you should open. Just like how if you take an airplane your head sometimes hurts from air pressure, much like staring at a displayed page on an electronic tablet. The old boat was given to me by my parents who taught me how to navigate that sea. It is tradition, a simple way to do things, but what can be the adventure of a lifetime. To navigate the coves and inlets, not just soar above them, is what lies in the pages of that worn story in your hand. Every book has a tale, from a long standing tradition of changing of hands, to the novel your friend said was a must-read. That is what I believe a book is, two covers, a varying amount of pages and a story worth reading, all between your two palms. A cold alloy tablet  is nothing but the latest technology, and will be replaced within a year by the "newest thing", simply an aging  airplane that contains the same story of a book.