“T-t-t-t-t-t-t-touch me…”

The question brought up on Tuesday night that struck me with a certain amount of significance: “What does the book have to offer that other media doesn’t?” After pondering what we had discussed this past class, my answer draws back to what we’ve been discussing since day one: the physical nature of it. Naturally, as we’ve touched upon, a book is a real, concrete object that we can hold in our hands, embrace like a newfound lover or caress like a two-month-old Labrador Retriever puppy when we are absolutely attached to it, or even deject it, toss it to the ground or hurl it against the wall or at an unsuspecting grandmother when it aggravates us. Sometimes even the mere sight of it in a corner of the bedroom resembles the feelings a fatigued forty-something mother receives when she has accidentally locked her three-year-old son in the car with the windows up on a scorching July afternoon, then suddenly finds her keys: it’s a relief, it’s a comfort zone, it’s relaxation after a long day in the gallows. It’s a goddamned love affair, and the same goes for other types of entertainment; loneliness may be accompanied by any number of mediums, if human interconnection isn’t a simple option: all of those times you fall asleep with the television on? Alone. All of those times you sing along to Gordon Lightfoot (or what you will) out loud inside of your hatchback? Alone. All of those times you sit back, I mean truly sit back, and relax with a novel? Alone. And if we aren’t alone, we zone everything else around us out. As single human beings, we turn to inanimate forms of entertainment when we cannot find other human beings to entertain our senses. The difference with the book is you can touch it, you can feel it, you can actually have some sort of physical connection with it. Think about an elderly couple, married for two or three generations. The ones who are miserable, the ones who cannot wait to wither away into the Earth don’t touch each other anymore. At all. In fact, they most likely go out of their way not to. The ones who are ecstatic about the short span of life they have left, however, are ancient examples of PDA and very well might need to get a room. This may not be true for all, but you catch my drift: the connection a human has with a book is very sensual in a way. What’s even more interesting is we are in love with a physical interaction that takes us into a non-material world: our imaginations. In this sense, the book satisfies both our physical and mental worlds simultaneously; a satisfaction that the television or the internet or other mediums are unable to accomplish.