THE TRIUMPH OF THE BOOK

THE PRINTED BOOK is back. Recent studies have shown that students retain more information when they read a hard-copy book compared to reading on a digital device.

- Richard Glover

One school near where I live in Australia responded to these findings by ditching its e-readers. The students found, according to a teacher, that “the ease of navigation” was superior when using a traditional book.

I love the way we now judge printed books using the language of the digital world. E-books may come with a ‘suite of navigational tools’, but it turns out that the best navigational devices are your forefinger and thumb. You can use them to flip the pages forward and backward. To think, all this time, those devices have just been just sitting there, dangling at the ends of your arms.

Fans of digital books may point out that e-readers have a handy ‘search’ tool. Old-fashioned books also have a search function, in which you turn back to the opening chapter to remind yourself of the hero’s surname. They even have a ‘bookmark system’, which uses a device called a ‘bookmark’.