Bent Out of Shape

You know what really peeves me? Books with bent pages or bent covers. God! I hate that. I mean, I like paperbacks because they bend easily, and I like that more than hardbacks, but honestly, that's their drawback too. I've bought a new book just because a book got wet, or its pages were bent.

I don't know why I prefer books the old fashioned way, because they are so prone to long-term problems. I once had the "dragon" book, which is the compiler book written by Aho, Sethi, and Ullman. After only a few years of owning this book, the pages were yellow. I mean, what textbook gets yellow pages? It's the only book that I've owned that ever did that. So annoying.

Some day I want to have books that are on computer disks, but for that to happen, I need the ability to "scrub" through pages quickly. I also need a laptop with a screen that's as big as a book so I can read the book like a proper book. You'd think this would be simple. Yet, I don't see it anywhere. No one, to my knowledge, has made a serious attempt at making books behave like books on a computer.

I know, you're freed from the restrictions of a book when it's on a computer, but you want to know the lesson Pixar learned when it made films using CG? They made it as if they were using a standard camera, shooting it with pans and zooms, and all the standard film terminology. For chrissakes, they could do anything, yet they resorted to using standard movie framing devices.

But text? Not done that way. And part of it, I know, is simply getting text on computers. It's so easy to copy a book when it's in electronic format, and people are still ready to buy real books. I should know. I own thousands.

So, until technology brings me an electronic book that's like a real book, I'll have to use real books, and put up with the fact that they can get bent.

Dammit!