Card: A Bedford/St. Martin's Production

Card: Andre Dubus III, Author

0:00:05.3
Andre Dubus III
It's- it's really like watching uh.. a house burn down. There's really nothing you can do at one point. There's no going back.

Card: Turning the Page: Books Go Digital

Card: Junot Diaz, Author, Pulitzer Prize Winner

0:00:15.6
Junot Diaz
Look, you're seeing books being transmitted digitally. People reading books uhm.. on their computers. Where will this take us all? How will this all end up? There's plenty of pros and cons. There's a lot of arguments around it.

0:00:29.3
Andre Dubus III
Studies have been showing that the- the medium itself, the digital medium itself is changing how our brains work. There's this new term called "continual partial attention." Where most adults now are giving you their continual partial attention. Even if they don't — even if not hooked to two or thre — two or three of these gadgets. What I'm worried about is that the- the attention span of a reader for a novel is being cauterized. Is actually

0:01:02.4
being affected, and that haunts me because what do we do now? I'm not going to write a six-page novel. I'm going to continue to write 500-page novels, I hope. Uhm.. and I just pray that technology doesn't do enough damage to these brains to actually affect the transmission, as Tolstoy said, "Art is transferring feeling from one heart to another." Well, that transmission had better be complete. And that's my concern.

Card: Kathi Kamen Goldmark, Author and Musician

0:01:32.3
Kathi Kamen Goldmark
I downloaded some books onto a Sony reader, and gave it to my mother. And she's tickled because she can increase the font. You know, and this isn't — oh, this is a couple of years old reader, so it's not nearly the state of the art. But just the fact that she can make the font bigger or smaller, or turn the page, or turn back, or look something up, or there's a little dictionary feature.

0:01:55.6
She loves that thing! And uhm.. she's 84 and she loves books, too, but she's not afraid of it. And so, I don't see why I should be.

Card: Paul Harding, Author, Pulitzer Prize Winner

0:02:06.4
Paul Harding
I- I think uhm.. in my case, I prefer real books for uhm.. no better reason than the quaint one that I feel like human beings are not digital, we're not made out of ones and zeroes, we're analog, <laughs> you know, we're- we're analog creatures. We're made out of flesh and blood and it's sort of — and so there- there's just something more humane <laughs> about a physical book, about sitting with

0:02:34.3
Andre Dubus III
I think we're going to lose the paper book, which to me is a tragedy, because it's a beautiful — it's an object d'art, it's- it's uh.. if it's a beautiful book, it's a beautiful book.

0:02:45.1
Junot Diaz
I, for one, think every generation's got to settle this stuff for themselves. W — how are you going to read books? How are you going to value books? How are you going to praise books? How are you going to understand books? What position do books fit into the culture?

Card: Producers, Peter Berkow & Michael Hoopingarner

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