BFTP: The book as object

Show me your bookcase, the ideas that you've collected one by one over the years, the changes you've made in the way you see the world. Not your browser history, but the books you were willing to buy and hold and read and store and share. Seth Godin

My books are read. They’re loved. And they’re carefully preserved so that they can be read and loved again, by myself or by friends or future children -- or used bookstore shoppers. Claire Fallon

Book lovers everywhere have resisted digital books because they still don’t compare to the experience of reading a good old fashioned paper book. Smell of Books

One of the first things I do when visiting someone's house is to peruse the bookshelves. As Godin above suggests, the books people save tend to tell you a great deal about their values. For the visitor, the physical book becomes a gateway to understanding a bit about another person. I tend to stay away from political discussions if I find Ayn Rand on the shelves.

When my grandson Miles asked for a Kindle for his 10th birthday, I was happy but also a little bit surprised. Both Miles and his brother are big readers and have some pretty extensive collections of physical books. Miles will continue collecting titles, I'm sure, but they will be digital and invisible to anyone visiting his room - or future home.

Over the past several years, my physical book collection has shrunk by 90%. I have a few favorite paperbacks of fiction that I know I will one day re-read, a few influential business/technology books, some travel guides, and a small collection of old books that I inherited from long dead relatives, including my grandmother's Webster's Second Unabridged Dictionary (c1945) that could easily double as a coffee table.

I am perfectly happy to read and collect digital books. For me, the "book" is not about the object but about  ideas and stories and emotions and experience. I've no real attachment to any one printed iteration of a particular work for a  long time.

Fifty Shades of Grey supposedly gained popularity because it was being accessed via e-book readers. The person sitting next to you at your kid's ball game wouldn't know that you were dipping into badly written pornography. Sounds about right. Unless I advertise it on GoodReads, nobody really would know what I was reading either given that I read only e-books.

I like this privacy, and I also believe such privacy is good for our struggling readers. Children are often embarrassed by their reading level, when forced to choose books others may view as written for younger readers. Carrying a device allows one to read at one's ability level without fear of ridicule.

I respect, but don't understand, those for whom the physical object of the book is paramount. Keep collecting. It's good for the paper and bookshelf industries.

Just make sure to hide your tasteless volumes.

Original post 9/21/15