Comment by submeta

And let's be honest, a good book collection is a great addition to a room, aesthetically. People tend not to talk about that aspect, I think they worry about being seen as pretentious showing off their books. But I think a book collection can be a great decoration, just as flowers or a painting can be.

And if you have family or friends over and one of them sees something they like, you can lend it to them there and then (if you are so inclined). Some of my earliest reading-related memories are being in an uncle's or neighbour's house and being fascinated by a book on a shelf that they kindly let me take home to read.

I will not buy DRMed ebooks. I hate the idea that someone can delete a book I bought. Once I have a book, I want to keep it.

I have quite a lot of books that belong to be grandfather, and lots that belonged to my parents. A lot of those will last another generation, maybe more. That does not happen with ebooks either.

I'm kind of the opposite, I can't bring myself to let go of my collection of paper books, or even to stop buying a new one every so often, but I do not like the physical experience of reading one nearly as much as I like the experience of reading on a phone or kindle. holding a book in one hand and turning a page with a click is a really wonderful way to read.

> I regret the decision having gone fully digital, which can only be a complement to physical books.

I've long thought the purchase of a book should be considered a licence: you pay a little more if you want a physical version too, but they're not separate things; the digital ebook comes free/is the basic way your licence can be exercised.

(Ideally licenced people would be allowed to order cheap replacements if they damaged the physical copy, but how would you stop fraudulent sale & continual replacement-ordering.)

Have you ever noticed than even after using screens/computers/phones for 12 hours a day, they almost never appear in your dreams when you sleep?

I understand your pain, we all seem to make dichotomies where none should exist.

Getting rid of print books is not a prerequisite for carrying your entire library with you. Why not both meme.

Hopefully ebooks will get to the point where they offer a better experience than paper books. But my mind does not handle the information in nearly the same way when using ebooks. I find them wonderfully valuable and productive, but in the same deep introspective way. They are transactional, focused and very task directed.

I have a library of work-related books (military). Most of the great ones have no digital alternative. Authors of rare or definitive works know to avoid digital formats. Last year I paid 200+ to get my hands on a newly printed book because i know it will still be relevant on my shelf in 10/20/30 years. After reading it once I may leave it on that shelf for years. One day i will need it again. I will know where to find it no matter what OS i will then be using.

Things like this cannot be bought digitally, nor would most readers want a digital copy. http://www.hisutton.com/pages/Book%20project.html

I cannot champion this guy enough. His website belongs jn the 90s (it needs the "www") but his skills in open source analysis and drawing are unmatched. (He draws in MS paint!)

http://www.hisutton.com/

https://youtu.be/PdKkR_lbLN0

I read all fiction on my Kobo these days. I used to collect paperbacks but they take up a lot of space, especially if you're getting through 20+ books a year. I basically hoard books on my Kobo so I never don't have another book to read.

I do remove the DRM, though. I still want to own books.

But paper is still by far the best format for textbooks. It's not even close.

This sentiment reminds me of an excellent short essay I read in Harper’s a few years back, called “Living Animals.”

https://harpers.org/archive/2018/10/living-animals/

For similar reasons I went back to physical books.

To add an additional change I noticed. Before I used to be big on reading as much as possible, remember everything. I’d get anxious if I forgot some details.

But now that’s all gone. I’ve learned to slowdown. I enjoy the books more and don’t worry too much about finishing it or remembering everything. I’m now deliberate about building my library. If I forget something I don’t sweat, if it comes back it comes back.

It could also have to do with age and COVID induced reprioritisation; either way I’m more at peace with where I’m about reading. I don’t think I’ll go back to digits books.

And oh now my children and wife know what I’m reading and who knows some shared reading habits could develop.

Same with me.

Another part is I didn’t like my kids seeing me staring at a screen all the time, especially when they were young enough to not get the distinction between eink and lcd.

What’s worse is id be reading all these books and they’d have no idea, even incidentally, what I was reading. Now we’ve probably got 500-600 books on the house and kids are always pulling out something to read.

I still get ebooks sometimes to search for something specific or to feel out a book. I still use my remarkable tablet for papers and things, but my personal library (filled with my personal notes that’ll last my life) is very precious to me.

I got rid of all novels and pop science books. They are fine to read on a kindle and rarely re-read. My physical books are textbooks and reference books (dictionaries, atlases).

I am a mathematician and I used to get a ton of mileage out of Google for research. I got really good at working out likely phrases other researchers would use for concepts that I encountered, and using Boolean operators to filter out pages with similar keywords. I think those days are over sadly. I think we will see a resurgence of personal libraries.

Physical has a spatial dimension that digital cannot replicate. Like I can't tell ya what page something is on but I can find it quickly by feel.

Something is lost by moving to digital but what? By what metric?

I love a paper back, but man did I fall in love with ebooks in the last year and a half. I own a Kindle and a Kobo and it's just so incredible for traveling (instead of carrying two books in my backpack) and in bed (the screen backlights are just fantastic).

I absolutely buy certain books physical still, if they're of a certain quality or meaning to me. If Martin Fowler released a new book tomorrow, I'd get it physical. Hell, I might even buy a physical and digital copy.

That said, digital is now my default way to read a book.

I have some books from my childhood still, and while I'm not really interested in reading them, my parents and others that gave them to me as gifts made sure to write a note of sorts in the cover. It's a great idea, if you give books as gifts. Make sure it's written in the book itself, not a separate (loseable) postcard or something. Add a date and the occasion.

I did the exact same thing. I'm back to buying real books, but I will say I still use my ereader in situations without good lighting or where the book is just too cumbersome. Sometimes that means I get the book twice which is suboptimal, but I strongly prefer the reading experience of a physical book. My appreciation of the work is even higher when the reading experience is better.

I agree physical books are great since you can hold them, smell them - nothing like an ebook. There is also a big advantage for us middle-aged folks that ebooks have and that's adjustable font size. Bifocal glasses help bit making font bigger is better.

I like to rent/buy eBooks for the first-time read, and if I like the book, buy the physical version.

Few things are more satisfying to me being able to hand a book off of my shelf to a friend when I think that they would like it, and having them report back they read and liked the book.

I really enjoy audio books much more than reading (perhaps it helps me feed my need to "consume", as I can listen to them while doing other, menial things) but I also enjoy buying the same titles and filling out a physical book shelf.

I love the visual appraisal of a library a lot more in person than on a screen.

I went this route as well, and I've now repopulated many of my favorite books from my youth in physical editions. I wish more physical books were like Goodman Games where any purchase includes a digital download code.

Regretfully, I still prefer generally reading on my Kindle, so I end up buying two copies of the book.

I can relate! A well-bound book is such a perfectly designed thing. A few books on my shelf were printed over 100 years ago, they have a very special weight to them.

Ebooks are also a miracle; a literal library on a microsd is mind-bogglingly amazing.

If I had to choose... I would choose both.

I just love the experience of reading a paper book, especially in trade paperback - which is weird because it's not a great format, but something about the dimensions (as long as the book isn't too long), and the cover and the feel and the paper...

I'd love to have bundles where you can get the physical and ebook at the same time. Going on holiday it is ideal to have an ebook reader to carry many books, but, like you say, there is something precious about having books lined up on shelves to see them.

It’s also a great practice if you actually wish to own the things you purchase. Same with things like music, movies, games. If it’s just on a cloud platform it will disappear one day.

> Now I have my whole library in Calibre and on my Kindle.

Funnily enough I’m contemplating buying a MiniDisc player since my music listening has gone way down since Spotify came along.

Its like the abdunance of selection is overwhelming.

The real question is why did you feel the need to be so extreme? Why couldn't you just do a little digital rather than fully? I don't understand this all or nothing stuff. Live moderately

I personally form the sensory and emotional connection with printed books! Holding a book, feeling its weight, and flipping through its pages...

My wife donated all of her CDs and subsequently started buying the same albums on iTunes. I still don't know why.

what do you feel about the inability to move easily with a large library? ebooks + printer seems like a nice compromise

but kind of moot if you are settled in life are not a desperado nomad of sorts

I'm an avid reader. But about maybe 15 years ago, I stopped buying printed books because I felt guilty - they took up too much space, and it was running scarce. And surely ebooks were superior - no space wasted, I could take an entire library with me, etc. It was just a matter of getting used to them, and abandoning the impractical romanticism of fetishizing the printed page.

At that time, I pretty much stopped reading. Now it's obvious why that happened, but at that point I didn't really connect the dots. I thought that I ran into a bad streak of books that just didn't hook me much, and then I was very busy, I always seemed to have something else to do rather than continue reading. So for those hypothetical reasons I went from reading several books per month to one per year, or even less.

At some point, I read a printed book and it hooked me like in the old times. And then, it dawned on me that the books being bad, or me being busy, were just excuses. The real reason is that I didn't like electronic reading. I wasn't proud of this. It wasn't a rational attitude. Electronic reading was clearly superior (less space, more flexibility and so on), and the content was exactly the same. I was actually quite ashamed of myself: was I such a shallow person that I didn't appreciate the contents of the literature enough to abstract away from purely materialistic concerns? What kind of person can't appreciate culture or art just because they don't like the medium used to transmit it? But be that as it may, the plain truth was that ebooks didn't hook me, and physical books did, so I admitted it and started buying printed books again. And once again, I'm an avid reader.

In the last few years, papers and studies have started to appear saying that with paper reading we retain more, we concentrate more, we learn more, etc... so I have started to reconcile with myself. Maybe I'm not a shallow materialistic asshole after all, and it's just human nature.

I'm jojoing on this for at least 15 years at this point. I really appreciate the physical experience of real books, the smell, the weight, just as you describe it. At the same time I really despise the storage space they take up, collecting dust, never to be touched again. So I go full digital for a while and read books on my Scribe. I get decision paralysis really quickly because of all the content available at a finger press, but the note taking and accessibility of it all are really nice. But after a while I grow tired of this and buy some hardcover books again and really enjoy that.

This cycle has been repeating for me for a long time, I wonder if I'll find a good balance eventually. My current approach is to try and read more technical stuff digital while keeping novels, the humanities, history as paperback, we'll see.

How do you find time to read?

you could learn bookbinding and print out your annotated books. i feel like it would be a nice hobby.