It’s coming up on a year since I wrote about my ill-fated love affair with Hansel Eggplant. That was such a heady time – so fraught with emotion and crazy jealousies – so unpredictable and ultimately so disappointing, that I could barely work up the energy to idolize anyone this past year. Oh, I had one Listada DiGandia in the early summer, but I guess he didn’t like me, because he never called me back. The tomatoes showed up and they did their work, but they failed to inspire me the way those yellow and purple heirloom varieties had the year before. The potatoes were quite satisfactory, and fed us generously for almost a full five months. I think we developed a real affection for one another, but still, when it finally came time to say goodbye just before Thanksgiving, it was a lukewarm parting. The sweet potatoes started binge-eating as a result of my inattention, and by the time we were finally able to connect emotionally, they were not the tubers that I once knew, though they’re still hanging around, and we’re still really great friends. My tromboncino squash began the season both flirty and energetic; but soon started trying too hard and was, as it turned out, a little too clingy for my taste. I had no choice but to end that relationship early. Talk about your hostile breakups. I’ve still got pounds and pounds of severed body parts in my freezer!

My greatest relationship this past summer turned out to be not a romance of passionate intensity, but a simple friendship, complete with mutual understanding, trust and respect. The jalapeños – the real workhorses of my garden – were everything that I knew that they would be. I had three of them this year. None were as tall, as broad-shouldered, as robust, or as all-around gorgeous as jalapeño 2009, but what can I say. They delivered well into November before finally being taken out by our first frost. I pickled some this year and even those preserved peppers are fantastic. I’ll be sorry when they’re gone. I’ll be honest, if there’s anyone that I miss as we head into the winter, it’s jalapeño. I anxiously await his return. And I know that he’ll be back. Oh, Jalapeño – you’ve got a friend in me.

Over the past few years, I have to admit that Jalapeño has both turned my head and changed my mind about some meaning-of-life type things. I mean, what is love, anyway, if it’s not rooted in respect? Is passion possible without trust? And what good is an evening of romance if a vegetable isn’t there in the broad light of a summer day when you really need them? I’m through getting all googly eyed over celeriac seeds that don’t get past the spindly hair’s-breadth seedling stage. And I will never again try to grow a white pickling cucumber. Oh, they look so pert and glamorous on the seedling packet, but once I got them in my garden they moved so quickly through their pert and glamorous stage that all I really got were bloated spheres that turned yellow and bitter in the sun and that after awhile I didn’t even bother to pick. And don’t even get me started on muskmelons that start out as robust and sturdy little plants only to find out mid-summer that they just can’t go the distance. Not a one of them put out fruit any bigger than the size of my fist, and even that started to rot more often than not before I even knew that it was there.

About the failures of all three distinct varieties of winter squash – gulp – I cannot even bear to speak.

All of which is to say that I’ve had my fun in the garden over the past three years, but I can see now that it was all only leading up to the moment, recently, when rutabaga took center stage in my life.

Actually we’ve known one another for a couple of years, but I never thought that I could get so attached to that shapeless, purplish body and that sturdy spray of greens. So he comes out of the ground needing something like a shave. So what? He may not get as much admiration or as much press as broccoli. He hasn’t jumped onto cabbage’s lactofermentation bandwagon (though he certainly could). He’s every bit as reliable and as imperturbable as the turnip, but he’s more mild-mannered. Turnip’s acerbic wit quickly overpowers just about any gathering. But rutabaga is mellow. He can walk into any casserole and not offend anybody. He can hold his own with any roasted root, and he really dresses up the mashed potatoes. Even my daughter enjoys rutabaga, though she doesn’t know it. He thickens up her homemade mac & cheese sauce and helps me to sneak a little extra nutrition past the vegetable embargo that is her dinner plate.

Ah ... rutabaga. Of course. How could I not have seen this coming? He’s the male friend that your dad already likes, the one that has a truck and is always willing to come help you move a piano. He’s the one whose shoulder you cry on in December when Hansel has made it quite clear that you will not be spending New Year’s Eve with him. He’s the one that you never even consider for a boyfriend ... and yet at some point it occurs to you, that maybe you should.

Solid – that’s what rutabaga is. Strong, and patient and always there for you, just waiting for you to realize not only what it is that you really want – but what it is you really need. He shows up when the fall lettuce bolts, and the chard freezes and the cabbage blows you off for the excitement of a moth’s fluttering white wings. While you’re standing around fingering the droopy, frozen broccoli leaves and complaining that this weather isn’t frost, it’s well below freezing, for goodness sake, and it’s barely even December! Rutabaga is there just waiting for you to notice that he’s shown up. He’s done what was required of him, without weeding, or fertilizer, or cold frames. And when you finally do push back those frilly green stalks and notice that once again rutabaga has come through, well, something just kind of happens. For the first time in the years since you’ve known him, you really see him. He’s just waiting for you to be ready for grown-up love, the kind that not only shoulders responsibility equally but values his work; not just because it’s work worth doing, but because he’s doing it with you.

Sigh.

What a hunk.

 When I was in my early twenties, there was a lot of noise being made about electronic books, and the inevitable obsolescence of printed literature. As a writer and a lifelong lover of books, this was an argument in which I took some interest. I was firmly on the side of the book-as-physical-object, generations old, perhaps, with yellowing pages that smelled vaguely of custard and dust. In fact I own a few books that I keep specifically for their physical incarnations. I am thinking of one old copy of Sinclair Lewis’ Cass Timberlane, a hardcover with slightly odd dimensions, a fine binding and a pleasurable heft. Many years ago, Mr. Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post, wrote an editorial (or was it an Op-Ed? It was a long time ago…) that was essentially pro-electronic book. I was so moved by it that I wrote him a letter (by hand, on a yellow legal pad, in my occasionally illegible handwriting) defending the book-as-physical-object, and expressing my surprise, given his other writings, that he would be heralding the coming of the electronic book in any kind of positive light. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I’m sure that the letter was full of youthful, enthusiastic and passionate ignorance, since I didn’t know a doggone thing about electronic books, and I only knew a little (from the outside) about the publishing industry.

To my great surprise and delight, he wrote me back. It was a short, typed (on a typewriter!) note on his professional stationary and I still have it to this day, though I’m not able to put my hands on it at the moment. But it said something like this: “Perhaps there was in that piece an attempt not to be, once again, a curmudgeon stuck predictably in the past … we must learn to bear with and embrace the brave new world that awaits us, lest we lose all influence over how it evolves.”

Wow.

I’ve thought of these words often over the years. They strike me as particularly wise. And yet, I was then and I am now usually quite behind the times. My family didn’t get our first color television until I was in middle school, and that was a resisted – and perhaps even partially resented – gift. Fast forward 10, 15, 20 years and you’ll see me as a young woman, only vaguely aware of the Internet that was already rapidly changing the world. My first e-mail account was set up, and paid for, by my father, who always advances into the brave new technological world far ahead of me. I argued with my husband about how unnecessary it was to get the DVD player and the TIVO (and even the toaster oven, but that’s another story). I only got a cell phone when it became absolutely necessary for work, and I don’t use it if I can help it. You might say that I’ve been kind of drug along into the modern world, kicking and screaming, every step of the way. So it’s probably not surprising that it has taken fifteen years since I wrote that letter to Mr. Yardley and received that sage advice in return for me to finally become the proud owner of an electronic reading device (ERD).

* * * * *

I have always been an avid reader. Even as a kid I did not so much read a book as devour it. Living in Europe as a child, with a small black and white television on which very little was available in English, I read a lot. We made frequent trips to the library, and I could get through two novels in a weekend and be left with time on my hands, wanting more. And I am still that way. Perhaps one of the things that I love about the world inside of a book – any book – is that it doesn’t change; it’s always there for you just the way that you love it. Inside the world of stories, struggle has a meaning that you can grasp. Endings are (usually) inevitable and satisfying. There are endings – which is one of the reasons that meaning is accessible in the first place. Literary characters to me are old and dear friends – Rumpole, Sherlock Holmes, the Famous Five – and places – London, Zenith, a stark, snowy landscape in Russia – that I can visit from time to time. Are any of these things more or less there electronically than they are in print? I mean, isn’t a book essentially what takes shape inside of us when we read it? And if so, what difference does it make whether we read it on paper or on some kind of screen? To what extent is a book its method of delivery of the words that comprise it? An argument could be made, I think, that the part of the book that matters, what you actually read, could just as well be beamed brain to brain without the intervening hoopla of author photos and endorsements and plot summarizing teaser paragraphs on the back cover. And to the extent that reading is distilled to feeling like direct communication from an author about whom I have had no opportunity to form any superficial prejudices, I have discovered that I like reading electronic versions of books. Plus, the ERD is attractive – handsome, even. It’s convenient. It’s light. I can take an entire library with me in my purse.

Besides, I have to admit that I am slowly being overrun by actual, physical books.

I’m not exactly stacking them and using them for furniture, but trust me, I could if I wanted to. I used to sell books, and so naturally I regularly cherry-picked my inventory for anything that might constitute the library that I might need to consult one day. A still-shrink-wrapped paperback copy of Ken Burns’ photo epic The Civil War? Got it. Container Gardening? Check. Dorling Kindersley’s Visual Dictionary? What can I say? Have you ever seen this book? It is cool. I have at least one copy of every Rumpole story ever written because hey, I might end up stranded on a desert island one day, and who better to accompany me than Rumpole? I still have all the books that I read in school through two college degrees, and the much more influential books I read outside of school while getting those degrees. And that’s just all the things that I’ve kept; all the things that I might want to reach out and touch once every ten years. Hundreds – thousands – of other books have cycled their way through my life. Mysteries, romances, all kinds of popular culture, literary and mainstream novels…

Truth be told, it’s gotten a little overwhelming. My taste for an unending supply of literature is now at odds with my desire for an orderly home.

* * * * *

The first electronic book I bought was actually bought by accident. I was sitting with the device in my lap, using its wireless capability to browse the store, and wish-listing things that looked interesting to me. While reading the description of a book, I accidentally selected the “buy” feature (the cursor defaults to the “buy” option when you are browsing, and all of this took place before I discovered the “try a sample” option). It immediately gave me the option to cancel the transaction, and I considered this. But then I thought – what the hell. So I confirmed the transaction and within moments the book was delivered to my device for my reading pleasure.

Only as it turned out, it wasn’t my reading pleasure. I actually didn’t like the book very much.

This is no big deal. It happens all the time. I quite regularly buy books or order books from PaperbackSwap.com that turn out to not be quite what I was expecting, not quite what I wanted, or not really to my taste. It’s not uncommon to read a page or two and to toss it aside. In fact even as I sit here writing this I have a box of books under my desk at my feet. All are posted on PaperbackSwap.com and are just waiting for a second chance to mean something to someone.

But I can’t toss my electronic book into the box. I can delete it from my device – and I did – but it left me with kind of a cold and hollow feeling, and a sense of having just wasted $9.99. And that brings me to what, fifteen years after my passionate letter to Jonathan Yardley on the subject, I’m realizing might be the real problem with electronic books.

Once a title no longer has value for you, it’s virtually impossible (pun intended) for the book to be passed on to someone else that does value it.

You cannot save a well-loved copy of an electronic book for your kids. You can’t write a thoughtful note inside the front cover and pass it on to a friend. You can’t take it to a thrift store, or donate it, or swap it, or sell it for a quarter in a yard sale. You cannot give it a new life or a second chance at love. If electronic books do anything in particular to really change the human experience of a book it’s that they take the inherent sense of cultural property out of the book as object – which is something of an epiphany to me, since I’ve always thought that the extent to which a book could be shared or passed on was a function of the person handling the book, not a property of the book itself.

I would say that as it turns out, when you “buy a book” with your ERD, you’re not really buying a book at all. You’re buying a license to read a book – whenever and wherever and however many times you want – without actually buying a book. You do not take possession of any object as a result of the transaction; what you gain is access to the experience of reading a book.

Sometimes – many times, in fact – this is totally acceptable to me; especially given the convenience of the electronic bookstore and library. Not to mention the unbelievably rich selection of literature that is in the public domain and is available for instant download – for free. On the whole I would have to say that I love my ERD, and I am definitely pro-electronic book.

And when the “license to read” alone is not acceptable? Well, then I’ll just have to buy the actual, printed and bound book – which in my opinion isn’t going anywhere.

* * * * *

I was reading an electronic book this past week (that I probably never would have bought in a traditional bookstore) and I came across this particularly intelligent observation: “The big flaw in most depictions of the future is that they always forget to leave in the past. Everyone always assumes that the entire world would just explode and be rebuilt in this kind of super-futuristic style. I still see old cars from the ‘30s and ‘40s around, right next to things that look like they’re from the year 2000. It’s that mix that makes things interesting.”

Well said, video game developer Cliff Bleszinski, as interviewed by Tom Bissell in his more-interesting-to-a-non-gamer-than-you-might-think-it-would-be book, Extra Lives, Why Video Games Matter.

Some things change. Some things stay the same.

I am enjoying the compact convenience and instant shopping gratification of my ERD while resting my feet on a cardboard box full of literary cast-offs currently posted on PaperbackSwap.com and awaiting an opportunity to travel across the country to someone who wants them more than I do. I still browse my own heavy bookshelves for perennial favorites, and I still hold yellowing old books up to my nose from time to time to get a whiff of that custardy-old bouquet. And I’m still poised to defend how things are right now, and to resist the next thing that comes along – for fifteen years or so, anyway.