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I CAN'T PASS JUDGMENT ANYMORE

I know all of my friends are loving the ease and convenience of carrying books around on a Kindle, or whatever the gadget of the day is, but this move to electronic reading is really affecting my ability to judge others, yes, you heard me right-judging others is now difficult.

It used to be that I could sit on the train and just by watching book covers, and their respective readers, I would get an idea of what books I might like. Now, everyone has a kindle and I can't really derive reading recommendations without appearing to be a stalker.

But worse than that, new friendships are severely affected. I used to be able to walk into someone's house and look at their bookcase and know whether I should run the other way-now, the non-visibility of books makes identifying incompatibility so much more difficult. For example, if someone were to walk into my house, this is what they might see:
 
You would be correct in making quite a few assumptions about me based on this random collection of texts, I am a Feminist and probably have some connection to the law, I either learned French or failed miserably, but at least you know I am linguistically ambitious, I clearly love international relations, may have some hording tendencies as evidenced by my still  holding on to my undergrad history book, I dabble in photography (photographs which may never be seen because they are digital) and I probably hate doctors because I want to be able to cure myself with food, or I love eating. These would all be great assumptions and surprisingly accurate and you could quickly choose to run away from  me or refrain from making statements I would obviously find offensive.
 
But, if I were to move on to kindle, you would miss out on all these assumptions and learn the hard way that we have nothing in common, by hard way I mean a long meal with nothing to talk about. So, for my sake and my decision-making process, if you decide to use a kindle, still keep a few hard copies of books so that I can judge, please, I am socially awkward, meals with me are just bad when I don't know where to start.
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Boots said…
I've been so indoctrinated by Facebook, that it took me a while to realize there is no "Like" button and I'm forced to actually say something. This is great! Evaluating someone's bookshelves is one of my standard friendship-measuring metrics.
April 16, 2014 at 1:38 PM
Modern Ifigenia said…
Thanks Boots! I don't know how I will cope :)
April 26, 2014 at 9:11 AM
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