When I tell people that I don’t buy ebooks, I think they assume one of two things: Either they think that I’m a sort of hipster who insists on owning leather-bound books and using only a typewriter, or they think I’m a bookstore employee fighting to keep her job in the face of a struggling publishing industry (OK, that last one is actually factual). But in fact, the truth is a lot less complicated.
The Apocalypse is nigh.
No, it’s not really — nobody panic. But I have a big interest in postapocalyptic stories, and I think — no, I know that it’s affected my consumer habits.
Rationally, I don’t expect an apocalypse any time soon. I fully expect technology to stick around and get better and better in my lifetime. But there’s this small paranoid part of me that whispers “What if?!” I love my personal library. It’s hard enough to be separated from the majority of my books while I’m at the U. I can only imagine the agony of losing all the titles on a Nook in the event of an Internet collapse or something similar.
To put this weird mindset in context, let me explain a few things about myself.
First, about four years ago, almost every member of my extended family ages 16 and up read Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. Although it was written in 1959, the story of nuclear apocalypse and the aftermath for the residents of one small Florida town is still a great one. It also opened my eyes to all of the things I just take for granted, like medicine, clean water, central heating and, especially, salt. For a whole year after reading Alas, Babylon, my family’s plans for the future were to stockpile supplies and move to Florida where, unlike in my home state of Idaho, you can live through a winter without modern conveniences.
Second, when I was 17 years old, I asked for a CD player for my birthday. Not an iPod. A plug-it-into-the-wall CD player. My parents checked with me several times to see if I was sure. I was. I have an iPod now, and I love it, but I still buy CDs and load them onto my laptop manually instead of buying digital copies. Part of this is an effort to support the music and bookstore industries, but it also stems from my personal plans for the apocalypse. If I have enough batteries, I can still listen to CDs on a battery-powered player. I will lose forever the few songs that I do own only as digital files on iTunes.
I’m definitely not building an apocalypse bunker to hide out in, and I’m counting on using technology for the rest of my life, but I am able to soothe my paranoia with little things like buying print books and physical CDs and DVDs. In the event of a cataclysmic disaster, always assuming I survive, I will get to be the cool person who keeps culture alive because I didn’t buy into the technology-driven world of The Before (as the past will inevitably be called).
If there is some sort of Internet collapse or electric grid failure or a “2012”-level natural catastrophe or a global war, my bibliophilia will not take a hit. My books will not be lost forever in the strange, cloudy world of the ereader — instead, my print library of close to 100 titles will be safe in boxes at my parents house. Oh, wait, guess that means I’ll need to be home when disaster strikes. That throws a wrinkle in my plans for finishing school and being prepped for the apocalypse.
k.baxter@chronicle.utah.edu