Spit & Polish : 09 October 2011

I'm no Luddite, but I believe books will still be books when the latest gadgets have hit the scrap heap

I recently participated in the annual Exclusive Books Boeke prize. It's been going for years and has become its own unique event. The name is clearly a pun on the much more virtuous and celebrated Booker prize, held in the UK since 1969.

The Booker is fearfully grand, and while I follow the results with keen interest, and always buy a copy of the winning book, I cannot help feeling that I need to wash my hands very carefully and wear my best clothes when I sit down to read them.

The Booker nominees offer a stern intellectual challenge, while the Boeke nominees offer the proverbial good read, the books about which you say: "I'll hang on to these, because I want to read them again."

As it happened, I was early for a movie preview and I sat down in the cinema foyer to continue reading one of the short-listed Boeke books, piquantly entitled When God was a Rabbit.

One of my colleagues arrived and drew back in horror, saying: "Don't tell me you still read actual books?" and before I could stop him, he hauled out his Kindle - or a clone thereof - and like some revivalist preacher, he extolled its many virtues.

If I had arrived with an ox-wagon drawn by real oxen, he would have had something to grumble about but for me to carry a real book or - Heaven forbid! - to actually read that book in public, gave him an opportunity to show off his array of cutting-edge technology to all who could hear him.

I swear I am not a technophobe. Getting information, picking up messages and tracking news stories on Twitter or Google offer unique ways to keep you informed and up to date. I am no Luddite, denying new and effective technology, but a book is a book, and a technological tablet is not. It is the difference between a robotic, mechanical dog, and a real dog.

I like the texture of paper and the flexibility of a book. You can have a tactile relationship with books. I put book-marks between the pages and when I find a passage that really makes me stop in my tracks, I use self-adhesive stars or dots of various colours that make it easy to find that phrase or paragraph, when I flip though the pages.

I've seen the Kindle demonstrated many times in shops and one kind person allowed me to take one out into a café, to try it out while enjoying a coffee. I cannot, however, relate to a Kindle as I do to a book. So, as long as books are around, I'll continue to read them, enjoying the texture of the paper and their simple presence.

But while I was reading the books nominated for the Boeke prize, I stumbled into yet another technological issue. I was reading an Australian novel called The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas. It's about a group of affluent, indulgent Australian suburbanites who get together for a barbecue. One of the men has a bit too much to drink and when an irritating child gets in his way, he slaps the boy down.

The consequences ignite a suburban war, as the pro-slap families and anti-slap families wage a battle that shatters friendships, destroys business partnerships and wrecks marriages.

Halfway through the book, however, there was a conversation between the characters, a debate about whether the film industry is on its last legs. As one character said: "If you buy a top-of-the-range TV, a huge screen and speakers that can be heard three blocks down, why would you ever go to a mall-cinema again?"

I heard that with grave misgivings because I feel about the cinema as I do about books. There is something about sitting in a big, dark place in which, for a couple of hours, you go to amazing places, hang out with beautiful people or race breathlessly away from serial killers or 3D aliens.

This huge, amplified world of the movies, where smiles can be three metres long, and a kiss can envelop you, just as a rabid vampire - or Jim Carrey's laugh - can make you cower in your seat.

Now try doing that at home. First of all, the room is not dark, and when it is not dark, people feel free to talk and move around. They never stop chatting or commenting and of course, the PVR handset can pause any show in its tracks because someone has to take a pee, or make more drinks or get yet another packet of chips.

"I didn't hear what he said," they say. "Just roll it back for me, so that I can hear it again." And back you go, for another look at a great goal, or a rugby try or a superb golf shot. If you are watching Idols or So You Think You Can Dance? and you are dying to hear what the judges have to say, someone will say: "I want to see that again before the judges mess it up."

That's why I prefer to see my movies in a good cinema, and my books stacked neatly on my bedside table - because they will still be there when, like the Discman and so many gadgets from the 1970s and 1980s, can be seen only in museums.