How do you value books?
Aug. 8th, 2011 09:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewanSo as to not pollute my friend's recent post about his large collection of books, I've decided to ask these questions in my own journal.
What does having a large collection of books mean to you? How particular are you about what books you add to your collection?
I've never had a collection as large as my friends (3-4 rooms worth of books). Between Joe and I, we have somewhere around 6-10 bookshelves worth of books. Are collection is largely science fiction, along with childhood, college, GLBT, and general interest books. When we moved 5 years ago, we decided to not unpack most of our books. We have three bookshelves full of books in our living room and a few rows of books in our bedroom bookshelves.
For the last couple of years I've been moving to buying digital books, mostly via Amazon Kindle. I really find that I have no attachment to the physical book. It's the story that I care about. I really like having access to the book I'm currently reading via my iPhone or iPad when ever I'm in the mood to read for a while. I don't have to worry about the book getting beat up, because the iPhone and iPad are somewhat studier than paper. Granted, the devices are more expensive, but I don't have to worry about cracking the spine of my iPad.
For a large number of my books, I would jump at the chance to swap my physical books for digital books.
Of course, when the digital apocalypse comes, I'm going to regret that last statement.
What does having a large collection of books mean to you? How particular are you about what books you add to your collection?
I've never had a collection as large as my friends (3-4 rooms worth of books). Between Joe and I, we have somewhere around 6-10 bookshelves worth of books. Are collection is largely science fiction, along with childhood, college, GLBT, and general interest books. When we moved 5 years ago, we decided to not unpack most of our books. We have three bookshelves full of books in our living room and a few rows of books in our bedroom bookshelves.
For the last couple of years I've been moving to buying digital books, mostly via Amazon Kindle. I really find that I have no attachment to the physical book. It's the story that I care about. I really like having access to the book I'm currently reading via my iPhone or iPad when ever I'm in the mood to read for a while. I don't have to worry about the book getting beat up, because the iPhone and iPad are somewhat studier than paper. Granted, the devices are more expensive, but I don't have to worry about cracking the spine of my iPad.
For a large number of my books, I would jump at the chance to swap my physical books for digital books.
Of course, when the digital apocalypse comes, I'm going to regret that last statement.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-08 03:42 pm (UTC)I've suffered from hard drive crashes that destroyed all of my saved documents and images. I should be better at backing things up, but I'm not. It takes a much larger catastrophe to destroy a physical book collection.
With buying ebooks from a "trusted" vendor, you have to worry about the health and ethics of that vendor: EG the debacle with B&N retroactively un-selling thousands of copies of 1984. And I wonder what will now happen to all those people who bought a Kobo from Borders (as I did) and did not strip out the Borders-specific stuff (which I did). What will happen to their ebook collections? (I use my Kobo to read books I've downloaded from other, open sources. So far only for free; I'm still wary about paying for one because see above)
I do need to weed my books. There are plenty of things in there that are never going to be useful to anyone ever again. Outdated travel guides and textbooks, for instance. But once I own a book, I own that book and can read or refer to it anytime I like. I don't need anyone's permission, an Internet connection, or even power.