[HN Gopher] The End of Private Libraries?
___________________________________________________________________
The End of Private Libraries?
Author : pbrowne011
Score : 55 points
Date : 2024-09-30 13:06 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (robertbreen.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (robertbreen.com)
| dmazin wrote:
| This post is a bit dramatic. My wife and I have 1-2k books. We
| know multiple people who have such libraries. I don't think
| they're going anywhere. And this is even though I have a Kindle.
| james-bcn wrote:
| Agreed. The sale of physical books is as healthy as it ever
| was. There is no reason to think that private libraries are a
| thing of the past.
| wpietri wrote:
| All people are going somewhere. As he writes: "this library and
| I might share the same dissolution". What you and your wife are
| doing today isn't evidence against his point. The question is
| what happens to those books after you die.
|
| I recently did a cross-country move and did some pruning of my
| books. In thinking about what to keep, I realized that as far
| as practical considerations go, I could have just scanned the
| bar codes, made a list, and gotten electronic editions of
| anything if I ever needed to read it again. I instead kept most
| of them, but for entirely non-practical reasons.
|
| I think people born today just aren't going to have the same
| emotional connection to physical books. For me, growing up in
| an age of information scarcity, they were a gateway to wonders.
| And even now, like the author, they're a reminder of where I've
| been, a map to the interior of my head. But I'd be wildly
| surprised if my teen relatives, many of whom are avid readers,
| ever built up libraries large enough to be cumbersome.
|
| So when I kick off, I fully expect that my treasured books will
| be scattered to the winds. If I'm lucky a few will be taken as
| keepsakes. But as a library, I expect it will die with me.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Books are not going away. My kids devour books just like I
| did when I was a kid. Books can be lent, gifted, borrowed.
| Books can be discovered in physical places, in the school
| library, the public library, in a bookstore.
|
| Ebooks just aren't the same.
| organsnyder wrote:
| All of my kids have received Kobo ereaders when they became
| proficient at reading. Kobo is owned by the same company as
| Overdrive, which is our library's e-lending platform, so
| they can easily check out books themselves.
|
| Each of the kids got their ereader when they were 6-7 years
| old. Now:
|
| - 13-year-old mostly reads sports news on his phone
|
| - 11-year-old mostly reads paper books, occasionally ebooks
| on his phone
|
| - 9-year-old can't find her ereader, reads tons of paper
| books
|
| - 6-year-old just got her ereader and is devouring books on
| it (which is always the reaction when they first get it)
| wpietri wrote:
| I'm not saying they're the same. And I am sure some kids
| favor physical books. But the question for me is the extent
| to which any of them will spend a lot of effort building
| and hauling around personal libraries when the digital
| equivalents are always available. And when it's easy enough
| to get another paper copy if you're willing to wait a few
| days.
|
| Some will, I'm sure, the way that some people born after
| CDs and digital music collect vinyl. But personally I'd
| guess it'll be a similarly niche interest, just another
| collector's hobby.
| robocat wrote:
| My one weird trick - for those you look at second-hand
| bookstores.
|
| If I see a book I already own that I love, then I buy
| another copy. Then I can give it away later to someone who
| I think will appreciate it.
|
| I try not to lend out my favorite books because it is too
| much trouble to track where they went. Although most people
| mean well, books don't always boomerang.
| dmazin wrote:
| My son, 4 years old, himself has > 100 books. So at least
| some people born today will have a connection to physical
| books!
|
| I don't disagree that this is probably getting less popular,
| since of course physical copies used to be the only way to
| consume them.
|
| > as a library, I expect it will die with me
|
| Yes, I think that is completely true. Why wouldn't it be? I
| think libraries have always held most value to the collectors
| themselves. I have a few rare books, but most of the value of
| my library is personal.
| wpietri wrote:
| > My son, 4 years old, himself has > 100 books. So at least
| some people born today will have a connection to physical
| books!
|
| And people have surely given him lots of stuffed animals
| too, but it's the rare adult who hauls around a significant
| collection of them.
|
| > I think libraries have always held most value to the
| collectors themselves.
|
| In recent years, sure, where books are an affordable and
| ultimately disposable consumer entertainment. Especially
| now that you can easily get a used copy of almost any book
| easily and cheaply. But that's a pretty small slice of
| "always".
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Nostalgia is a powerful thing
| pfdietz wrote:
| It used to be more powerful. I remember it well...
| posterman wrote:
| Sounds like consumerism
| yuvalr1 wrote:
| I would say this is the exact opposite of consumerism. People
| find a lot of artistic value and intelligence in the books they
| acquire. The post articulates beautifully how much connection
| this man has to his books. He does not regret for a moment for
| buying them, which is the feeling you have when you buy things
| you don't need. He looks at them and remembers the experience
| of reading them. This is beautiful and magical, and I can
| relate to that.
| posterman wrote:
| The acquisition of books is totally decoupled from the
| "artistic value" and "intelligence" that reading them
| proffers. I buy books too, rarely at retail but sometimes,
| and I make no bones that my desire to do so is as consumerist
| as anything else I purchase.
| yuvalr1 wrote:
| I think smaller apartments and lack of storage space might be a
| driver for buying less books. However, while I do feel modern
| apartments are smaller, I don't know if this feeling is true.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Huh, I was skeptical but it looks like studios and 1 bedrooms
| have been getting smaller recently (2 and 3 bedrooms have been
| getting larger): https://www.rentcafe.com/blog/rental-
| market/market-snapshots....
|
| "In general, small rentals are getting smaller and large
| apartments are gaining square feet. More precisely, two- and
| three-bedroom apartments have been adding more floor space in
| the last decade, while studios and one-bedroom apartments (the
| dominating floorplan among new apartments) have been getting
| more and more compact."
| max_ wrote:
| I have a 2k epub collection.
|
| My bookworm friends claim it's not a "real" private library
| JadeNB wrote:
| > I have a 2k epub collection.
|
| > My bookworm friends claim it's not a "real" private private
| library
|
| As long as it's in an un-DRM'd format where your access to it
| doesn't require anyone else's permission, it's a real private
| library. Who cares what anyone else thinks?
| WillAdams wrote:
| That is one concern I have about a similar collection of Kindle
| titles --- I'm hoping that having access to the associated
| e-mail account (the password is on a slip of paper in an
| envelope in the safe) will allow my son on-going access when I
| pass away.
| fuzz_junket wrote:
| Your friends are just poking fun, of course it's a real
| library. I also have a large number of ebooks (in addition to a
| 1-2k book physical library) and the ebooks are, paradoxically,
| less accessible. It's too easy to just download hundreds of
| books in one go (let's say if you wanted all the original
| Goosebumps books) and not actually look at them, whereas every
| physical book has to be obtained and shelved individually. Then
| ebooks disappear into Calibre where I utterly forget about
| them, whereas a physical book's presence on the shelf is a
| constant reminder that it exists and is waiting for me to read
| it.
| lifefeed wrote:
| The one downside of ebooks is there's no way to donate them to
| a library. I have a hundred and something books on the kindle
| that will never be read again.
|
| Although I guess I don't "own" them, I only license them.
| abeppu wrote:
| The author talks about how acquiring books reflects their
| personal story, time spent, interests etc, and then seems sad and
| surprised that kids don't want their parents' libraries ... But
| presumably those kids have their own interests and landmarks of
| their course through life. I fully expect to keep a handful of my
| parents personal books that I have specific memories of, but
| keeping the whole of their libraries feels as pointless as
| keeping all of their furniture or all of their wardrobes (also
| things that one can spend a lifetime acquiring and spending time
| with).
| Aeolun wrote:
| I mean, I might have wanted the furniture I grew up with
| because of sentimental attachment, but my parents have already
| overhauled their entire home now that all the kids have left
| the nest. I care nothing for the new stuff.
| eleveriven wrote:
| Each person's bookshelf reflects their unique journey
| bhouston wrote:
| Our grandparents, and great grandparents also had libraries of
| some type. Most of us have none of those books. Books get out
| dated quickly, we have different interests, etc.
|
| We prefer to keep things our ancestors created (journals,
| artwork), awarded (military medals), used in a meaningful way
| or that represent them (photos.) And because space is limited
| and we technically have a nearly unlimited number of ancestors,
| we do not keep much.
| organsnyder wrote:
| I have a lot of my dad's old library. His first career was as
| a philosophy professor, and so it's mostly books too specific
| for me to sustain an interest in (certainly not that many of
| them). I have the space, so I've been holding on to them, but
| I really wish I could ask him (he passed away in 2007) which
| books were dear to him, and why. As it is, a particular book
| could have landed on his shelves because he got a good deal
| on it or something.
| sevensor wrote:
| This is why I've started writing marginalia when I read.
| It's a conversation with the future, and an explanation of
| why you should care about the book. If a reader wants a
| pristine copy, it's easy to come by. For the most part. I'm
| not going to go marking up a rare book, but then I'm not
| likely to own one either.
| WillAdams wrote:
| One of my most treasured books is a translation of
| Goethe's _Faust_ which has marginal notes from a nun.
| lifefeed wrote:
| Also by the time a parent dies it's possible those old books
| are not in great shape. It only takes one mistake for a whole
| shelf of books to end up damp and musty, and sometimes no one
| notices how bad it got.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Looking at their bookshelves... That is a decent wall. And
| remembering that most of it was in the previous house too and I
| do not remember them ever taking any of them to read again...
| Yet they are reading new books. And even got rid of some of
| them. I see no value for me to keep most of them, apart for
| them looking nice or maybe picking handful of somewhat more
| interesting books.
| andersa wrote:
| You probably have tens of thousands of unnecessary documents and
| other files hoarded on your computers, right? This seems like
| much the same thing to me, it's just digital now.
| HKH2 wrote:
| I can't wait till there are physical books that will let you:
|
| 1. Find words almost straight away.
|
| 2. Change the font and its size.
|
| 3. Change the line spacing.
|
| 4. Scroll and use the top of the screen to keep track of where
| you are so you don't skip lines.
|
| 5. Have hyperlinks to footnotes. (Edit: I meant endnotes.)
|
| 6. Have bookmarks with labels that don't affect the reading
| experience.
|
| 7. Jump to chapters immediately.
|
| 8. Hold it the same way, no matter where you are in the book.
|
| 9. Read it discretely.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| 10. Don't need external light 11. Always only take up the space
| of a very thin book no matter how many you bring
|
| I have a lot of sentimental feelings for my physical books, but
| they are just so inconvenient. Sadly, for this reason I only
| buy reference books in print. I even repurchase books I was
| gifted physically, as ebooks to actually read them.
| WillAdams wrote:
| By way of contrast, I want an e-reader which:
|
| - will allow organizing the books _exactly_ was I want (why
| isn't by percentage read an option, or chronological by date of
| publication, or timeframe covered)
|
| - allow flipping through pages of a text quickly with a re-
| draw/re-fresh rate which actually allows reading individual
| words as I turn pages quickly searching for a specific passage
|
| - allow for a high-quality, detailed reproduction of an image,
| either in incredibly high resolution with subtle details (like
| to a printing of a b/w engraving with two black plates) or in
| full colour (and for extended colour range there was Hexachrome
| which I wish had become more popular)
|
| - have the same contrast as a piece of paper w/ bright white
| paper under UV light, or even a Kelmscott Press edition (which
| has the blackest ink I've ever seen)
|
| - allow _beautiful_ typesetting and will not allow widows and
| orphans and stacks to occur (in a re-flowable format --- no
| fair claiming PDFs are ebooks when folks sneer at them as not
| being ebooks, or presenting a collection of pixel images in a
| wrapper as an ebook)
|
| Bonus points if the text is actually correct --- I've never
| read an ebook in which I did not report at least one typo (and
| that includes _Dune_ ("pogrom" was rendered as "program" and
| there was an error in the formatting of a glossary entry in the
| edition which I re-read) --- that said, the ability to directly
| report errors is nice, and fai r easier than tracking down the
| editor of a given volume at a given publisher (which reminds
| me, I need to check for an updated copy of _The Fall of Arthur_
| by J.R.R. Tolkien to see if the typo I reported has been
| corrected).
|
| The world would be a better place if authors would take typos
| as seriously as Donald E. Knuth does and give out reward checks
| (I have a physical one for $2.88 for his _Digital Typography_
| --- and need to find a typo in a more recent work so as to have
| an account at the Bank of the Island of San Serriffe).
| falcolas wrote:
| Being fair, I've never found a paper book without at least
| one typo either. Hell, I accidentally bought a paperback on
| sale that had the last 100 pages replaced with another copy
| of the previous 100 pages.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Printed books, esp. older ones had a lot more constraints
| (print deadline) and don't have the same ability to update
| the master copy and push the corrections out --- there
| isn't an excuse for a book which has been continuously in
| print since 1965 still having a typo in it decades after it
| was first released as an ebook.
|
| In my experience print editors are far more receptive of
| being informed of errors than ebook editors --- often an
| ebook seems not to have had an editor at all, certainly no
| one proofread the copy of _Space Cadet_ I bought on the
| Sony ebook store for my Sony PRS-505 --- it was so rife
| with errors as to be unreadable, and required that I borrow
| a print edition from a local library so as to be able to
| send in the corrections.
| HKH2 wrote:
| I agree with your points; ebooks are not perfect. Thank
| goodness the flaws you've listed can be fixed.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| It would also be nice to able to buy the next book in a series
| without going to a store or waiting for it to be delivered.
| egypturnash wrote:
| 5: hyperlinks to footnotes are the worst, you have a tiny, tiny
| little target to tap that _might_ be inside the much larger
| area of space which will turn the page when tapped, and usually
| they are actually to _endnotes_ rather than _footnotes_ -
| footnotes are at the bottom of the page they are referred to
| upon, rather than halfway across the book at the end of the
| chapter.
|
| A _real_ footnote sits at the bottom of the page and is visible
| the moment you turn the page, alerting you for the tiny little
| sign pointing to it somewhere in the text.
|
| 9: you can steal the dust jacket from a similarly sized book
| and cover up the fact that you are reading _Fannie's First
| Gape_ or whatever else you're embarrassed about, y'know; hell,
| you could even rip the cover off entirely if it's a paperback
| and you don't care about the book's condition.
| HKH2 wrote:
| 9. It's not about being embarrassed. I just don't need
| discussions about the book that I'm reading or even about the
| fact that I am reading a book at all.
| sevensor wrote:
| Stepping into the library of someone who has passed on can be
| very personal, and confusing. Who were you, that you have 31
| volumes of Reader's Digest condensed books, shelved next to
| Josephus, a full matched set of the Waverly novels, a mixed bag
| of Dorothy Sayers paperbacks, and a nearly complete run of Boy's
| Life from 1956-1961? I think the most respectful thing you can do
| with such a collection is to find people who appreciate parts of
| it, and pass the books on to them.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| It is confusing. My mom had a number of romance novels even
| though she never struck me as a romantic person. Maybe a phase
| she had when she was younger? I wish I could have known that
| version of her, before I was here
| tempaway456456 wrote:
| Books are like candles, an obsolete technology that we will keep
| around forever because they look nice and they are good in a
| power cut (or in the bath)
| redwoolf wrote:
| Many years in the future, after global warming wrecks our world,
| when humanity rebuilds civilization, they will be glad for folks
| like this person. Without physical books there will be no way to
| reconstruct our time and tell our story. Digital media will be
| useless to future generations if there's a blip in continuity.
| eleveriven wrote:
| Surviving artifacts of our culture and knowledge
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Digital media will be useless to future generations if
| there's a blip in continuity.
|
| If anything, this undersells it: plenty of not-very-old digital
| media is useless today with no blip in continuity, either
| because of bit rot or, more commonly, because of perfectly good
| data in a format for which there don't exist readers any more.
| bluGill wrote:
| Don't forget too that it is some form of subscription and the
| owners decided not to continue keeping that in your
| subscription.
| JadeNB wrote:
| That's true; there are a lot of reasons not to rely
| passively on digital media for archival purposes. But I'm
| speaking here even of digital media from the lost, pre-
| cloud, pre-SAAS age when one could loosely presume to own
| at least what was on one's computer, but (therefore?) there
| was no institutional interest in keeping the large variety
| of media readable. (For example, I joined the Mac ecosystem
| not long after they switched away from SITX compression,
| and almost immediately it became--at least for a new user--
| impossible to find uncompressors.)
| loughnane wrote:
| Head over to r/bookshelfdetective and you'll see a bunch of folks
| hyped to share their libraries with the world. Maybe such folk
| are a dwindling but more vocal crowd. Maybe not.
|
| Numbers aside, this line makes me think OP is missing the point:
|
| > I bought the book because I like having a visual, tangible
| record of the time this book and I spent together. I like
| scanning my shelves and seeing proof of a rich reading life.
|
| If this is why you have books (I've heard them called "audiobook-
| trophies" or "kindle-trophies"), you're missing out on what a
| library can do for you. A library kept in OP's way shows how many
| books he's got through. What matters his how many books get
| through him. The proof of a good reading life is inside you. It's
| not furniture for your living room.
|
| What is a good library then if not a trophy case? It's got books
| that you go back to again and again. It's got books you've not
| read yet but whose spines reminds you of gaps in what you know.
| It's aimed at the long-term, a collection of pages whose text
| will never reflow or get a pushed update. It's markings won't
| change, letting you have a talk with your older self.
|
| I have many audiobooks and ebooks, and they're better at some
| things than physical books. Still, what a hard drive can't do
| what a personal library can.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think there are as many opinions on what makes a good library
| as there are people. There isn't just one answer.
| bluGill wrote:
| Just make sure you know what it is for you and don't mess
| with someone else's. My sister in law and wife organized my
| bookshelf by color and size ones - it looks much better than
| way I'll admit, but now fiction and non fiction are mixed,
| and sets of books are not together, and so for what I care
| about it was worse.
| loughnane wrote:
| Good point. It seems the question is what are they trying to
| accomplish with the library?
|
| OP knows what he's trying to do (remind himself of past books
| and evidence of reading life), and yet he feels disenchanted
| if I read the tone right. If that's the case it's a tacit
| admission that he _wanted_ the wrong thing and could learn to
| want something better.
|
| That's not a big deal, part of growing is learning to like
| the things that bring you the most fulfillment. I can't tell
| him what's best, all I can tell him is what I think is more
| likely to bring fulfillment and my reasoning.
|
| I'd love to hear other opinions on what's good and why.
| eleveriven wrote:
| This beautifully captures the bittersweet reality of book lovers
| in a digital age
| ricksunny wrote:
| For folks clearing out the parents' library, consider a donation
| to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt (yes, the one
| built to replace the famous one of old). But before that, figure
| out how to collect, accumulate, & ship books to the library in a
| way that is sufficiently low cost, somehow funded by donors, and
| in a way that tbe library signals a priori that it is willing to
| sift through on-site (and for which it signals it exert influence
| on the import authorities). b/c despite its symbolic imoortabce,
| the library has a _lot_ of empty shelfspace now two+ decades
| after its opening.
|
| What the new library has in spades is prodigious fire-suppression
| technologies, so choose books you feel deserve special
| preservation into posterity.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| Good riddance to this kind of library. His relationship with his
| private library is the same as most people's: an outlet for
| comfortable consumerism, materialism, and nostalgia.
|
| What he needed was an antilibrary:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilibrary
|
| The mysterious unread tomes of an antilibrary taunt you and
| beckon to be read, but not necessarily re-read. The untrodden
| path holds more adventure than the beaten one, where the treasure
| has already been claimed. Books in an antilibrary are quests
| filling up your log, the rewards of yet unknown, possibly great.
| kylec wrote:
| The lament of collecting something of great personal value, which
| is of value to no one else, reminds me of my photo collection:
| over 100,000 photos taken over decades, which I absolutely
| cherish, that are completely worthless to anyone but me, or the
| people contained within them (who I have usually already shared
| the relevant photos with). Perhaps it's no accident that the
| common term for a personal collection of photos is a photo
| _library_.
| niemandhier wrote:
| You never know. When an old neighbour passed away his kids gave
| us his prized collection of photographic slides. Images he had
| taken over course of 30+ years as a construction engineer
| working all over the world.
|
| Those were beautiful images of countries that do not exist
| anymore, at some point we realised that he had spent a lot of
| time building underground concrete structures in the Middle
| East and handed the images over to a nice gentile man at the
| local military base.
|
| Maybe they were useful maybe not, but at least they were looked
| at again.
| strken wrote:
| I wish more people gave their books away slowly during their
| lives, instead of all at once upon their death. It's a much nicer
| way to inherit them and it lets you share the experience with the
| inheritors.
| hansvm wrote:
| I think that's fairly commonplace. Books just enter the library
| even faster. Reversing the flow direction might be challenging,
| since most people who know when they're going to die don't
| usually have much time to get their affairs in order.
| mihaaly wrote:
| I love having a wall of books and the time spent on reading
| books.
|
| Unluckily I do not have either of those. The never ending
| competition between society memebers for better position and more
| stuff to show sucked me in too, making me move for better places
| to compete others and do things much quicker and doing more
| things - in unit of time and overall too. All those moves made
| the collection of my books go way down to be a sad excuse of
| personal library. It is a short shelf. The same cruel race took
| time away from reading too. I should have enjoyed life more than
| participating this stupid and on the end futile race called
| career. Let others trying to disrupt the f world along
| pretentious figments. It did not worth it, not at all. What
| worths to live for is elsewhere. Partly in reading books and
| having a good personal library.
| safety1st wrote:
| Well, you have the right to decorate your home however you
| please, and I am of the view that it should be decorated with
| objects that are meaningful to you. That can certainly include
| a shelf or a case of books.
|
| Some years ago I moved to a different continent and the
| distances being what they were I had to sell off my book
| collection. This year I resolved to rejuvenate my reading
| habit, which had decayed since phones and social media were
| introduced into my life (along with my attention span).
|
| I decided that for the remainder of my life I would buy one
| quality hardcover book per year as a birthday gift to myself. I
| read ebooks, they have their merits, but there are books which
| are truly exceptional works and which have had a profound
| impact on my life, which I will undoubtedly benefit from re-
| reading over the years. It feels entirely appropriate for these
| books to be displayed prominently in my home as reminders of
| who I am, how I got here, and to always be at my fingertips in
| case I want to reference them. There will be some sort of
| meaningful memory, achievement or milestone associated with
| each one of those books. For all the rest, there's Kindle.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| > I would buy one quality hardcover book per year as a
| birthday gift to myself
|
| Care to give an example? I assume that by quality you mean
| both quality construction of the book itself as well as
| quality content printed on the page?
| LegitShady wrote:
| it doesn't really matter, does it? its whatever they
| consider quality. You would use your own definition if you
| wanted to do the same. I collect certain kinds of art
| books, and fantasy novels. If you liked something else,
| like computer science academic books, you could collect
| those. It's up to your own definition and style.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| Does it matter? No, it really doesn't. I'm just curious,
| as someone who has a few hundred books sitting around the
| house, plus another 20-50 checked out from the library at
| any one time.
|
| I don't know that I'd consider much of any books I own to
| be "quality". But the house I have does have a fairly
| nice built-in bookshelf that could probably hold 500
| books all by itself. Someday I'll fill it, maybe? With
| mass-market paperbacks and hardbacks? "Quality" books?
| Who knows!
| simpaticoder wrote:
| Private libraries are the privilege of those who do not move
| frequently, or at all. A large library is surprisingly heavy and
| bulky to move, and each time you move you will be tempted to
| leave something behind. If the odds of leaving it behind are even
| 5% then over time the odds approach 100%. That said, the physical
| copy of a book has its own story, the dog-eared pages and cracked
| spines, the occasional stain. I personally somehow find myself
| remembering which side of a book something was on, and roughly
| how far through. Very handy since it reduces the search space
| immediately by 2, at least. And of course, you get all the
| benefits of messy, imprecise search - the joy of finding
| something new. Plus you can easily lend them or give them away,
| and they can't be remotely deleted.
|
| The OP writes as if ebooks and paper books (and audio books!)
| live in perfect zero-sum disharmony. It seems like most
| inventions have this effect on discourse. This is more a comment
| on the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle than
| anything. In this case, I think large paper libraries will tend
| to dwindle, but not disappear. Much like how accurate music
| recording and playback caused live music to dwindle, but not
| disappear, etc.
| falcolas wrote:
| Moving is exactly how my wall of books went down to a device
| full of books.
|
| As much as I cherished those books when I first read them, many
| never made it to a second reading. And the feelings the
| physical books evoked has faded over years. So they were
| donated to a library, so that another person may build their
| own memories and feelings.
|
| Plus, I'd be up to three walls now with all the books I have on
| my device, let alone those I've read on KU.
| dmazin wrote:
| Having moved a ton of books multiple times, they are definitely
| bad. But not nearly as bad as records, where boxes that fit
| well are expensive, and you have to worry about them getting
| damaged whether from heat or pressure!
| TexanFeller wrote:
| My personal library has grown massively in the last few years. I
| have a few rooms with the walls covered with textbooks and
| deluxe/limited editions of classic works. They're very comforting
| to look at, at least when I'm not stepping over piles of books in
| the floor.
| ks2048 wrote:
| I thought the title meant "the era of private libraries is over",
| but it's really about "the end-of-life of my private library". As
| a physical book lover, I empathize.
| physicsguy wrote:
| I used to buy lots and lots of physical books.
|
| When I had a child though it forced me to downsize since the
| bedroom with four bookshelves became a kids room. I had to reckon
| with 'Why am I holding on to this specific book?' and in many
| cases I just couldn't answer that question. Now I'm very picky
| about what I do acquire because I don't have the space to expand
| much without pushing other things out.
| lmaoguy wrote:
| You will own nothing and be happy.
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