Is the book perishing? Some end-of-the-year thoughts

There are many differences between reading a book (or even a magazine) and reading online. To me, a person who considers books some of her closest friends, these differences are not to be ignored in this electronic age. From a new article in Science Daily:

Clicking and scrolling interrupt our attentional focus. Turning and touching the pages instead of clicking on the screen influence our ability for experience and attention. The physical manipulations we have to do with a computer, not related to the reading itself, disturb our mental appreciation, says associate professor Anne Mangen at the Center for Reading Research at the University of Stavanger in Norway. She has investigated the pros and cons of new reading devices.

Mangen maintains that reading on a screen generates a new form of mental orientation. The reader loses both the completeness and constituent parts of the physical appearance of the reading material. The physical substance of a book offers tranquility. The text does not move on the page like it does on a screen.

Juxtaposing that article with another caused me to hold my books with new and visceral appreciation. (And I do literally mean "hold" as in grasp or even hug.) The second new article (Washington Post) held somber predictions for the publishing industry.

I can't help thinking that as this year gasps its way to its merciful end, something terribly sad is happening, that a vague, general shift in the cultural landscape will alter how or what we read in some still indefinable way; that a quirky, creaky, financially insupportable business that in spite of itself produces that most desirable and perfect of objects -- the book -- is perishing, and

that we are yet to fully feel the loss.

...

And it seems to me that it is we who are paying no attention, that we hurry home past that empty bookstore, looking blankly in the window, thinking instead about our dinner plans and our weekends, while the last lion of publishing is memorialized and then forgotten and the old houses of legend are abruptly, savagely shuttered.

Some related thoughts were posted by Jordan Furlong (Law21) about the possible future of the legal publishing sector.

Then there’s legal publishing. If both firms and schools are forced to cut back, law book publishers have a new set of problems, because that’s basically their entire marketplace.

For book lovers, not exactly sunny. I don't think the book industry will completely perish but then I may have to eat my words. And my meal might be electronic rather than paper. What are your thoughts on the book's future?

Note (added December 24, 2008, 8:46 AM Mountain): A related article: "Online v. print reading: which one makes us smarter?" (Scientific American). And (added 9:00 AM) "Turning Page, E-Books Start to Take Hold" (New York Times).

Image credit: NinoAndonis.