Is The Age of Printed Literature At An End?

On Saturday, my mailman told me I was a relic. 😂 I adore my mailman. He is in his 70’s and only delivers mail in my small little town. He truly is wonderful. During the winter, he brings the mail to the door because he is afraid that I will slip and fall walking down the driveway to the mailbox. He brings any package heavier than 5 lb. to the door as well. He knows that we don’t use our front door and we only use the back door so, all packages are left on the back steps or in one of the patio chairs. He is thoughtful and as sweet as can be, but he called me a relic.

I am apparently an extreme rarity because I write handwritten letters and I am subscribed to a plethora of magazines. I also order books on a regular basis because I love reading.

Every month, always on a Saturday, he brings me my stamp and flat rate box order. I love being able to order stamps and boxes with the bonus of having them delivered to the house; as our post office is not open on the weekends and I rarely have the ability to get to the post office during the week.

So, on Saturday, my mailman was delivering my order and I had received six magazines and a package from Barnes and Noble with a few books inside. He handed me my order, my package, and the magazines and said,

“My dear, you are a relic in this age of computers. People don’t subscribe to magazines anymore because they can read them on their phones. They don’t buy books because they can read them on their phones or listen to someone reading the book to them. “

I didn’t realize that I was a rarity, or a relic as he had called me, and I had no idea that magazines and books were no longer the norm. I have a Nook and a Kindle, but the sound a book makes as the spine cracks when you first open it, the smell that wafts upwards as each page is turned, and the rustle of each page as it is turned are things that cannot be duplicated by a digital version of a book.

Don’t get me wrong, I love both of my e-readers and I have thousands upon thousands of books stored on them. I would not have access to many of the old cookbooks that I have collected if it weren’t for the digital archival libraries. I love reading cookbooks from the 1700s, 1800s, and very early 1900s. (I own several actual paper cookbooks from these timeframes.) However, as much as I love my e-readers, I love books more. Hubby and I both have multiple magazine subscriptions and the kids have their own subscriptions. We are just a family that prefers to be able to have the full experience while reading. My daughter loves the perfume sample pages and the occasional product samples, which only come in the paper version of magazines.

I enjoy the portability of my e-readers, but magazines and books are also portable. I cannot carry thousands of books or magazines in my purse, but I can carry one or two and then, have my e-reader in case I finish the ones I brought.

I receive a massive amount of paper catalogs too. I think my favorite catalog is Lehman’s. I received a catalog out of the blue one day, shortly after we bought the house, addressed to myself, which was odd because I didn’t order one, but I fell in love the second I opened it. Hubby has a wishlist from this catalog, which is really weird because the only thing he ever wants are racecar parts.

I am happy being a relic. I hang onto especially interesting magazines, but it’s rare for me to keep the entire magazine. (I kept the royal wedding issue of People magazine.) I usually take a photo of a recipe, cut the recipe out and slip it into a binder, which holds loose recipes. (Sometimes, a cookbook only has one or two recipes I want so, I scan them, print, and give the cookbook either to the library or to someone I know.) Hubby and our youngest kiddo, on the other hand, hoard magazines. They have every issue. The kiddo hoards magazines on gaming, computers, technology, and Scientific American. Hubby hoards racing magazines.

With books, I have bookshelves full of children’s books from both my childhood and the kiddos’, assorted textbooks and an entire reference shelf. The reference shelf is dictionaries, thesauruses, encyclopedias on specific subjects, almanacs, Guinness world records books, atlases, medical books, herbology, astronomy, astrology, and science based books, and language books.

I figure that we should be good to go if the internet suddenly doesn’t exist. The only magazines I keep every issue of are Readers Digest and National Geographic. I only have a two year subscription of each of these so, I won’t have thousands of them.

I also have bookshelves full of books on subjects that interest myself or someone in the family, a few trilogies and series that every home should have, Such as, the Lord of the rings trilogy, Harry Potter, The Divergent series, and the Hunger Games. I also have the books everyone reads in High School, those books that are classics and everyone should read them.

A few examples are:

Where the Red Fern Grows

1984

Farenheit 451

The Giver

To Kill a Mockingbird

Stuart Little

The Secret Garden

Charlotte’s Web

Where the Sidewalk Ends

White Fang

Catcher in the Rye

Lord of the Flies

The Outsiders

Of Mice and Men

A Wrinkle in Time

From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (This was a favorite of mine when I was younger.)

So, I have a fairly normal collection as far as I know. I try to teach my kids to love reading and can’t imagine an existence without paper books. I understand that technology is advancing and it is making our lives so much easier, but I don’t want to see a world without libraries filled to the brim with books or a time where no one even knows how to write a letter. I adore receiving mail and I have penpals, who reside on the other side of the world. When I send a letter, I don’t just send a note, I include little items that lie flat such as stickers, a leaf, a feather, a random button, or anything that strikes my fancy that day. So, when someone receives a letter from me, it is covered in stickers or drawings and filled with absolute randomness. It is the equivalent of joy inside of an envelope.

I believe that we can prevent the death of paper Literature and letter writing by writing letters, buying books and magazines, and teaching our children to appreciate writing letters and reading. If you homeschool, teach your children how to write letters, write them letters so they get excited when the mail comes to the mailbox. Teach them how to utilize a library. Teach them how to use the relics of our time, atlases, almanacs, dictionaries, thesauruses, and encyclopedias.

I am content with being referred to as a relic. I dread a time when children ask “What were books?” or “What’s a letter?”

Cursive writing is no longer taught in many schools because it is no longer considered useful in the modern world. Children no longer learn to sign their name and soon, if cursive ceases being taught, no one will be able to read historical or ancient documents written in cursive. One major example of such a document is the Constitution of the United States of America. If we teach younger generations to appreciate books, printed Literature, writing letters, and teach them cursive writing, the knowledge will not be lost and the time of printed Literature will not end just yet. Until next time…