Jennifer’s epiphanies

I own so..so..so many books. I like the look and feel of the cover and the paper inside. My grandmother owned a bookstore in the bay area and when I was little I used to marvel at all the books she had in her store. I was drawn to the vintage magazines and toys she had on her shelves. I like that you can just pick up a book and go to the page you were on. This last week, I went to two book signing events. The first book signing I went to was the David Sedaris event at the new Balboa Theatre in San Diego. David is so damn funny. He has a voice that I can listen to for hours telling me silly, offbeat stories about his family life or some satire he concocted from his vivid imagination. David is a cute little guy that drew a picture of himself in my book of him throwing up. He said he is too old for people to be taking real pictures of him, so he drew me a picture of himself. Then I told him I saw him on Letterman (YouTube Style), he then proceeded to draw chunks coming out of his mouth and told me, "that is me when I got off the stage on Letterman". The second book signing this week was a wine tasting event for Gary Vaynerchuk's book CRUSH IT! Gary has a sense of enthusiasm that makes you want to go CRUSH IT yourself. I admire his wine tasting abilities- not sure if I could pick up the petrol, beef jerky hints in wine myself but fruit hints of the wines- yes. I liked 3 out of the 4 wines which is not bad for someone who doesn't like the strong tannins in wines. Both of these events I thoroughly enjoyed and had a physical book in my hand at the end of the night. 

My point to this post is-  if books went out of style, what would we have these authors sign? Would there be a blank page for the kindle for the author to stylus their autograph? Would furniture makers slow down the production of book shelves? How about B&N, Borders and most important the indie booksellers? I understand the usefulness of a kindle for clutter relief and ease of use when traveling, but damnit, I like my books. What if my kindle fell into the bathtub? I would loose my page literally. Paper and ink wins this debate. Technology has won most of my heart but in the publishing world, I will stick to the real thing.