I Love the Smell

When the first time I downloaded the complete copy of Friends from #1 season till I-don-know-th season, the few years ago, I saw that the era of book had already finished.For years, if I set my eyes on a movie’s scenario copy, I should’ve been waiting till the studio published their scenario in a book, then I’d buy the book. I should wait until the book’s displayed in bookshops, and what annoyed me was, not all of studios would publish books, wouldn’t they?Now, I don’t need to wait longer for those people to write books. Just google it, and I’ll get any movie scenario that I want. Any.

And eventually, I could get not only my favorite movie scenario, on-line. I could also get copies of any books. Recently, I’ve downloaded the original copies of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga,

[caption id="attachment_22543" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Stephenie Meyer's Twilight"][/caption]

the four of the books. This is fascinating, coz the sensation of reading Meyer’s Twilight which has already translated into Indonesian by Gramedia, is different from reading Meyer’s original scene which was written in English.

Yesterday, I went to a book shop for window shopping.The place was selling second import books. Their qualities were fine though they were second. And I loved seeing novels written in English. It was excited, coz I’d been used to see the copies which were translated into Indonesian.

Then I found this, Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl. It’s New York’s copyright in 2001, the original price was US$ 3.99. But in the shop, it was sold at Rp 25.000,00 only.

[caption id="attachment_22544" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl"][/caption]

I’d never read it, but I’d been hearing its promotion from my fellas. They said, it was an excellent book.

I smelled the fragrance of the pages and smiled. I swore that I really love books which smelled like printing machines like this. Then I grabbed it home.

At home, I showed it off to my sister. This is an imported book. But I bought it in quarter price. Then my sister said, “If you’d love to, you can download it in 4shared.com and you can get the original copy in five minutes only.” The question is, if I can download the book, can I get the smell, too?

That is the strength of an hard copy if you compare it to the soft one which is downloaded. As you buy a book, there’s a sensation of shopping, about picking up a book among the racks and reading the synopsis written on the back cover. There’s a sensation of getting confused as you choosing the titles that you wanna buy, while there’s nothing but pennies in your pocket. There’s a sensation as you sit at the corner of your drawing room by having a cup of coffee, and there’s a passion which streaming on your blood as you’re turning the first page. There’s a sensation while you’re exhausted of reading and you fall asleep with the book which pages still open on your lap. You can’t get all of those sensations if you get the book’s content by downloading it on-line. Though the contents are just the same.

Bookstore doesn’t need to lose the customers though now e-books are rocking. There are still lotta fanatic book fans, coz reading books ain’t just about reading the content. Having a book is about appreciating an art creature, and an e-book won’t be able to replace the art of having the hard copy.

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