What is a book?

It's easy in this day and age to be able to discard obsolete things such as typewriters, flip-phones, and other things of that matter, but the question that is arising, one that worries me, is are books going to become obsolete?

When I was about eight my obsession with books began, binge reading all of the books in the unfortunate events series, or in my older years the romantic series, became the norm for me. I would sit at a bench during lunch or recess with my nose stuck between the pages inhaling the too-familiar scent of my favorite books. As other kids played tag or gossiped I never felt alone, I had friends but I would much rather indulge in the lives of Junie B. Jones or Bella Swan (which I'm not proud of). So my childhood was a whirlwind of different lives coming together in the mind of a pre-adolescent to form her own opinion of the world. How do you tell someone like that that books don't matter? Sure kids in the future may be able to flip through their kindles and keep up with various characters and stories at once, but they would never get the satisfaction of marking their favorite pages and being able to pick up that old book and re-read the sentences that changed their life, and flip through the worn out pages as their hands guide the all familiar route to their favorite passages.

Joe Meno once said that the message is more vital than the medium it is shown through, and with this I agree. But if we only looked at the vital things in life, what pleasure would we get? Let’s say books were handbags, sure we could carry our purses in plastic bags but there is no pleasure in that and it is not appealing. The same goes with a book, anyone could type words on a computer and call it a book but I believe what essentially makes a book, a book, is the packaging that goes with it. What makes a book, a book, is the book cover artist working for months to ensure that when someone passes by this story no one can miss it. What makes a book is making sure that the book is the perfect length for the story and that the pages are distributed evenly to make the reading flow better. What makes a book is an eight year old girl lugging around her worn out copy of Twilight because she feels as it is a part of her, another limb. Sure with e-books we can get what is vital, but we can’t get the life of the “book”.