Personally, I don’t see any advantage of a real book over an ebook (locally stored) in an e-ink reader. And there are disadvantages: ergonomics, space, cost, environment. EDIT: books last longer (decades or centuries) than SSDs. But M-DISCs can allegedly last for millennia.
There are some fields where there are a real measurable advantages of physical books, essentially as an archive. I can name two: 1) Chemical Engineering 2) Classics In both cases the physical book may be the only place to find certain kinds of valuable info. In the case of Chem E, I was told this by my father, also a Chem E, who said that some of these old books contained values and tests that were found nowhere else…
> There are some fields where there are a real measurable advantages of physical books, essentially as an archive.
Their advantage isn't that they're physical, their advantage is that they haven't yet been scanned in.
The problem with ebooks to me is that they have no real physical presence (obviously) and therefore I have a harder time remembering if I read them, and where I read them. On the other hand I have a ton of physical books on my shelf, and can specifically look at one, remember what it’s about, and where I read it. The book itself is a kind of memory totem, and over time I’ve built up a nice little physical collection…
Not as satisfying as seeing your books, but I keep a running doc where I note the title, dates, a short synopsis, and a few sentences of thoughts for books I’ve read. It helps me keep track a little better.
Personally I would want to collect books which are now out of print, for the sake of preserving information. I don't understand the appeal of first editions or autographed copies.
I have a fair number of autographed books, but I work in publishing so a lot of them are signed by friends and people I've worked with. Which means there's no way I'd willingly part with them. I'm less interested in 'collecting' as such so much any more. And my cookbooks all show visible signs of use.
> I don’t have the same thing for the ebooks I’ve read, and it gives me a weird feeling of amnesia. I have a similar feeling when it comes to my music collection, some of which includes rare recordings. I ripped everything and have it at my fingertips on my phone, computer, etc, but I often find that I’ve forgotten when I have. When I was younger, I kept it all on a shelf. Browsing one’s music collection (or a friend…
Maybe the cartridges could even contain the actual music. On an engraving that stores the audio information perhaps. This engraving could be played back and reproduce the audio. It probably would never work though.
Hmm, I’m thinking that for this to work best, it really should be some sort of round medium, a disk or a cylinder of some sort. I think disks might be best because then you could engrave the music on both sides of the disk and more easily store them in protective containers on shelving units.
Personally, I don’t see any advantage of a real book over an ebook (locally stored) in an e-ink reader. And there are disadvantages: ergonomics, space, cost, environment. EDIT: books last longer (decades or centuries) than SSDs. But M-DISCs can allegedly last for millennia.
There's no environmental cost for ebooks? Are they produced by magic?
The problem with ebooks to me is that they have no real physical presence (obviously) and therefore I have a harder time remembering if I read them, and where I read them. On the other hand I have a ton of physical books on my shelf, and can specifically look at one, remember what it’s about, and where I read it. The book itself is a kind of memory totem, and over time I’ve built up a nice little physical collection…
otoh regular books:
- can't be read in dark mode
- can't change font or font size (or line/paragraph spacing)
- can't use search
- can't be in multiple places (multiple devices)... uh, easily
- etc
I think you just have embrace the positives of whichever you choose.
The problem with ebooks to me is that they have no real physical presence (obviously) and therefore I have a harder time remembering if I read them, and where I read them. On the other hand I have a ton of physical books on my shelf, and can specifically look at one, remember what it’s about, and where I read it. The book itself is a kind of memory totem, and over time I’ve built up a nice little physical collection…
That's exactly how I feel although I do wonder if a lot of younger people, if any still become readers, will just a different, less physical relationship with their books than I do or you do. It's probably a bad example but I don't have any physical connection with music or video anymore for instance, but I definitely remember having that kind of relationship with favorite records and tapes when I was a kid. And now…
As a bit of anecdata, my kids show a slight preference for physical books over ebooks, although they’re happy enough to listen to digital audio books. They have literally no experience with physical media for music but have at least encountered DVDs and Blu-Rays (although when I talk about watching something on disc they actively resist it—the convenience of pulling up something on streaming outweighs the limited selection available).
Personally I would want to collect books which are now out of print, for the sake of preserving information. I don't understand the appeal of first editions or autographed copies.
I have a fair number of autographed books, but I work in publishing so a lot of them are signed by friends and people I've worked with. Which means there's no way I'd willingly part with them. I'm less interested in 'collecting' as such so much any more. And my cookbooks all show visible signs of use.
I was more of a collector as a younger person than I am now (as evidenced by my 2000-volume personal library). I generally only sought out first editions by authors that I really loved (Graham Greene being the primary exemplar). Most of the signed books I have are either written by friends (oddly the Pulitzer prize winner in my friend circle isn’t from my writing life but from my music life) or were purchased second-hand and already signed. I will admit that I’ll generally prefer a reader edition of a book over a collector edition—I own both of Greene’s retracted novels, one was dirt cheap from a second-hand bookshop in Canada and has a slightly warped spine so that the book viewed from the top is a parallelogram rather than a rectangle, and the other I paid a bit more for, but not at the extremes of price because it has a library rebinding (from the era of libraries rebinding hardcover books to increase their shelf life, a practice which has since been replaced with plastic-wrapping the dust jacket).
I've even considered printing off essays from the internet I find insightful. I want to reread them, read them in bed, preserve them for the future. Archive.org does exist, but everything on the internet seems to be ephemeral.
After I started reading essays printed in books, like Emerson's, I realized there is no blogger alive that is worth reading anymore. Something to consider.
It’s not merely that—I’ve found that reading a book on a technical topic is a faster route to understanding than trying to learn it from random webpages spewed forth by the google.
The problem with ebooks to me is that they have no real physical presence (obviously) and therefore I have a harder time remembering if I read them, and where I read them. On the other hand I have a ton of physical books on my shelf, and can specifically look at one, remember what it’s about, and where I read it. The book itself is a kind of memory totem, and over time I’ve built up a nice little physical collection…
otoh regular books: - can't be read in dark mode - can't change font or font size (or line/paragraph spacing) - can't use search - can't be in multiple places (multiple devices)... uh, easily - etc I think you just have embrace the positives of whichever you choose.
- you can't carry 50 of them in your backpack. Invaluable as I travel the world.