Sad thought about books.....

The fall of large publishers is the gain of the self publisher.

 

LOL, reminds me of a friends house when I was a teen. I watched the house for them once when they went on vacation. It was during the Watergate trials and I had to record the news and stuff every day while they were gone (on reel to reel audio, vcr's didn't exist yet. )
The were voracious news and information hounds.

Ok EVERY wall in the house had a bookshelf against it, in the living room they were TWO deep. Yes, you had to move one to get to the other. They had probably 15 years worth of newspapers and literally hundreds of college textbooks. If you were to ask, my friends father had read and knew every book in that house. It was kinda spooky.

I guess it all payed off as all three of the kids had/have IQ's in the 140's--160's. The oldest got a perfect score on his SAT's and is currently the head of the geophysics department at Yale University.

My mother was also a voracious reader going through about 20-25 books a week. I also had a friend, Tim, who ALWAYS has a book in his hand, always. If Tim didn't have a book with him, something was wrong. I mean heavy weight stuff, Dickens, Melville, Dostoyevsky, and of course Clancy and that guy would consume two - four books of that type in a week.

I personally don't read books as often as I used to, spend too much time here.

 

The thing is, in many ways, e-books are shit.

You can't put pen or pencil marks on em. You can't put them on a shelf and decorate your house. You can't share and swap em with people.
And most importantly, its nice to be away from computers and thumb thro something bigger than a Kindle thats just feels relaxing on the eyes etc.

E-books aren't even cheaper than print ones in a lot of cases.

 

I agree with everything said.

I dislike ebooks, no matter how convenient they seem to be.
I don't want to stare at a screen that long, I use technology more than enough as it is.
Plus books are much more to me, and no kindle or app or whatever can replace that.

Also, I don't buy books much, I have a library card =)
Shelves and shelves of books really take you somewhere special.

 

I actually would love a movement towards ebooks. I understand your perspective, but wouldn't that add even more value to your books?

The classic library is a fun display and all, but honestly ebooks make more sense. I wouldn't mind if books stayed alive though, it's newspapers i hate, they should be illegal

 

To me, its an identity type thing. Like your clothes, home etc.
Some of the bks I've devoured even feel like "trophies" to me.

Its the same with vinyl records. And its fun just to visit a real music buff's house and thumb thro' their old album covers. Like entering another world. So much different to just searching an mp3 list.

Like beautiful coffee table books. You can't do that with a kindle..

 

That's actually a fun point, cause we can turn anything digital now.

Should we still make hard copies of:

• DVDs
• Games
• Vinyl Records

This is all cheaper and more accessible through digital formats.

At the least i still believe we can made small strides, the amount of papers teachers hand out would be much better suited for an electronic substitute

 

You don't have to worry about paper books.... I'm pretty sure I buy all the world's supply of them. (I buy a lot of books.. a lot. And I will never switch to buying digital books.)

 

I think digital has a place and it will in time be used more and more.

I personally would rather have a print copy. There is something comforting to me to curl up with a good book and spend an afternoon.

 

Most importantly, you don't end up OWNing the book
Ebooks work kinda like a license and companies like Amazon can yank all your books if they feel like it.

 

Books give me very sad thoughts...

 

I am the same way. My eyes get too tired trying to read off computer screens. I have a good stockpile of all kinds of real books and I continue to add to my collection.

I worked in libraries from 1978 through 2011 when I retired. All that time they were saying books were on the way out. When I was retiring the university was replacing a lot of their reference books with digital. They were on license that would have to be renewed over and over, so they could just keep sticking it to you in terms of money.

 

books are definitely not becoming obsolete.