Multimodal Communication through Books

I get exited when I find an interesting book, which also is important for my study! (Or is it interesting because it seems important?) Usually the book is from a library. I make notes in it with a pencil, make copies of the most important pages and erase the notes before returning to the library. But reading the copies is never the same!

During the copying the difference between left and right pages gets also erased, the numbers of pages have changed drastically, as well as the thickness and size of the book. My intuition doesn’t work any more in finding the most important quotations: I feel lost! Often I also lose my interest and excitement when all pages are the same A4-size, the paper sheets have the same white nuance and the same quality, and the colours form the front pages are gone…

One might think that communication through written texts doesn’t have much to offer – that it is objective and static – the letters and words are printed, and pages don’t really change much (when compared to digital pages). But, again if compared to a screen, books have their smell, thickness and weight, smoothness and consistency of covers, texture of quality of paper that influence the sounds the book makes when changing the pages. They are, after all, physical three dimensional objects that influence my senses and communicate in multimodal ways. This communication somehow gets personal - even before considering the contents of the book!

May be I should consider taking photographs rather than taking copies? A photo could at least preserve the illusion of three dimensionality…