Who on earth is Jennifer Land you ask, and why is she so demanding? Well, Jennifer Land is the daughter of Edwin Land, the brilliant inventor of the Polaroid camera. At the time she supposedly said this back in 1943, Jennifer was 3 years old and out on a walk with her father on a vacation in Santa Fe. Land was carrying his favourite film camera, the Rolleiflex. Land had yet to invent the Polaroid camera, but his Steve Job’s like mind started to wheel and turn at his daughter’s simple yet elegant question. Well, why not?? And so started his quest to devise a camera that could replicate the complexities of a dark room in the palm of your hand.

As you might guess, I am in the midst of reading Christopher Bonanos’ compelling book, Instant: The Story of Polaroid.  I picked this book up on a west end Toronto adventure last week in one of my all-time favourite book shops, Type Books, pictured above. You might recall Type Books, as they produced one of the most charming, creative short movies on their bookstore last year. All of us publishing types shared this video over and over across our networks as it very cleverly reminded us all why we love books so. They come to life and they grab you!  If you haven’t already, please check out their little piece of brilliance called “The Joy of Books” here.

I am always fascinated when ideas slam into one another. In this digital age when technology-enabled instant gratification is no longer desired but expected, the irony is not lost on me that I would pick up a print book on a once leading edge technology whose day has long since come and gone – the Polaroid camera. Why travel across town to visit a bookstore when I could have downloaded Instant in…well… an instant? It is true that my iPad is filled with ebooks all in various stages of completion. Ebooks are convenient and I love the ability to share favourite quotes across my reading network. I can also carry as many as I like on trips, all on my slim iGadget. Why then would I ever buy a print book again? Are they not becoming a “technology” whose time has also come and gone?

My carefully curated home library would tell you that I buy print books that are best read in print. They are either beautifully crafted, like Instant, with stunning photos and thick, colour-saturated paper that make my fingers happy to touch, or they are “keepers” that I will pass on to my niece and nephews someday. Penguin’s artistically rendered The Great Gatsby, or the beautiful One Hundred Years of Solitude. Harry Potter!! It really isn’t a question of either/or when it comes to reading format, but of when and why. This week I stumbled upon this brilliant satirical article by The Huffington Post’s Andrew Losowsky that effectively captures the heart of our current debate over reading formats. As the pundits like to say about the publishing world: the book is dead. Long live the book!

I would also like to thank the gracious staff of Type Books on Queen Street as they not only welcomed me warmly, but allowed me to take some snaps of their cozy book store. You can learn more about Type Books and it’s origins in this thoughtful review.  And yes, I also see the irony in replicating the Polaroid effect with my iGadget in the snap above 🙂 Thanks to the creative folks at Hipstamatic. Once I finish Instant, I will share some more stories about Edwin Land. In the meantime, if you love photography or compelling non-fiction or even uncovering the workings of the mind that influenced Steve Jobs, please check out the book here. It is a good read!