Excerpt: Muddy prints

Most people didn’t like books. They were old, obsolete, had been so even before the Fall. They didn’t like the smell of paper or ink, hated the weight of them in their hands compared to the slim profile and familiar scent of plastic and circuitry. Most books were shoved into corners and forgotten, gathering dust and clinging to forgotten tales. People were interested in now. Some few thought of the future, but the past was consigned to a huge heap of mistakes and stupidity that had led them here, to the tiny islands of grey concrete in a wild brown world.
Lexaen liked the rough weight of them in her hands though. They felt real to her, and she would smooth the paper with her hands and lick her lips as she scanned the neat rows of print. It was different to reading a screen, less contrast and less control. Reading a book was to surrender to the whims of writer and publisher. She couldn’t press a few buttons and change the appearance, couldn’t translate it. There was no way to reshape it to see what others had commented on in the text. She had to give in to the format and trust that she’d be able to feel the intent and pick out the meanings without help. It felt more intimate than her little electronic notebook, being here alone with a book and the ideas. The only filter was the writer’s word choice and her comprehension.