By Edward Nawotka, Editor-in-Chief
I’ll admit that to a large extent I’ve built my personal library for free. Over they years in my capacity as a book critic I have been sent tens of thousands of books for consideration. Often twice, first as galleys and second as hardcovers. Many of these I donate, but thousands I have kept.
Increasingly, though, I’ve become more and more reliant on services like NetGalley and Edelweiss for my review copies, and only request final print editions of books I want to fact check my reviews against. And as I become more and more comfortable with the convenience of digital reading — and get older — I start to look at my bookshelves with a bit of suspicion? Will I ever really read that Joyce Carol Oates novel from six years ago? Or that book about the life cycle of garbage that sounds so interesting, but isn’t likely to be something I’d pick up in favor of a new episode of Breaking Bad?
If I’m truly honest with myself, I’ll never live long enough to read all the books I already own.
So why keep them? Loyalty to the printed book? No, fear that I’ll forget I wanted to read the book in the first place. Fear of losing whatever that particular print title represents to me. Fear that a house without print books will feel like less of a home to me. I was raised surrounded by books and hope to raise my daughter the same way. Though for her, they might not mean as much and at some point in the future, if I burden her with 10,000 volumes she might not feel any urgency to read, how will she feel?
And, of course, I ask myself, what will I feel if I divest myself of a lifetime of accumulated memories, hopes, and dreams represented by my books?
So tell us, have e-books led you to purge your print library? Or has it made you hold onto it even stronger?
Let us know what you think in the comments.
14 Comments
Just last week I mused about printed books vs paper books, considering that my printed books age with me, whereas an ebook reader becomes obsolete and needs to be replaced at regular intervals. My paper books do not blink, do not require Internet connections, do not see others’ annotations and comments, do not connect with readers’ social networks, do not talk, and do not do anything except exist to be read.
Thus the words from a printed book can resound inwardly because of the surrounding emptiness, like the beats from a well-tuned drum.
In the not-too-distant past, when I entered someone’s apartment or house, I would be able to browse their CD (or album) collection as well as their bookshelves, and I took great pleasure in that because it told me something about that person – something that I would probably have to replace with a 20 page questionnaire in order to get the same info. Now that CD collections are more or less obsolete, I rue the day when even all the books will be gone and I will be left staring at framed photos of exotic locales and Matisse prints. (“Do you mind giving me the password to your computer so that I can browse your music and book files?”)
So, I at least, am determined to hold on (and add) to my book collection, if for no other reason than I will still be able to say to someone, “Here, I want you to borrow this book. I think you’ll love it.”
I love my Kindle and also love the book collection I’ve built over the years. I love displaying my books in all their tactile glory but I also adore the ease with which I can carry multiple books with me on my Kindle.. So I’d say that as far as the question is concerned the reader in me will keep on building my e-book collection but the bibliophile in me craves for and honors the lifetime of books I’ve collected and will continue to (albeit at a much slower pace).
Once I got a Kindle, I began gleefully purging my physical books. Moving every few years and packing up all my hardcovers and dense trade paperbacks quickly taught me just how attached I was to paper and ink. Getting rid of my books was a natural progression, following getting rid of my CDs and DVDs.
If people want to see what I read, they can check my Goodreads page. I share music and playlists on Spotify. I discuss movies with friends on social media. For me, there’s really nothing lost but unnecessary physical junk.
@Ivo: Your e-reader may need to be replaced, but you can re-download your ebooks at any time. And once those ebooks are on your device, no internet connection is required. And I turn off all that social media junk on my Kindle and just immerse myself in the words, too.
Sounds like you just prefer the printed book. No need to try to prove it’s better. It’s just better for you.
I understand that for many people, digital reading devices are easier. As a student I used to wonder whether having one would beat carrying a bag of books with me everywhere. But I think that people should take into account what digital readers are: a fad. Sure, there are definite implications of long-term trends, but most of the serious readers I know–the ones who spend significant money on their reading–still prefer hard copies. I think it’s going to take time for the tactile tradition of reading a hard-copy to die out, if it ever does. What I’m more curious about is what the e-book market will look like in five years. Is it possible for the novelty to wear off?
I have a library of several thousand books and I only plan to add to it over the years. I agree with Mr. Nowatk, so many of my books have such important and specific memories attached to them: gifts from old friends, loaners that I’ve “adopted”, missing copies lost to ex-girlfriends, others annotated and underlined in favorite classes. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but it just seems so difficult to imagine a world without books, in favor of digital readers. It seems sterile and soulless.
What I think is most likely is a detente between the two mediums, with Wolfe, Joyce, and Faulkner sitting on the shelf and E.D. James, Mitch Albom, and Stephanie Meyer on the digital reader.
I have a book I bought 40 odd years ago; Garcia Lorca’s Gypsy Ballads. It has been through the wars with me; marriages, children, careers, divorces, deaths, travel. It has been in 65 different apartments and homes in different countries. The pages are yellowed and frayed and it is wine soaked and coffee stained and jasmine oil smelling and there is nothing more beautiful. Paper and print contain visceral memories, echoes and shadows that are both the author’s and the reader’s.
In an interesting coincidence, NPR has a wonderful essay that asks: Will Your Children Inherit Your E-books? — or more to the point — what happens to your e-books when you die?
“Whenever serious readers die, their heirs face the task of dispersing their books. But few of us like to think about what will happen to our own libraries. Will our children value our books (and will they have shelf space for them)? Will they be bought by a serious research library, or draw bids at Christie’s? Not unless we are famous, or they are first editions.”
It’s well worth a read:
http://www.npr.org/2012/06/21/155360197/will-your-children-inherit-your-e-books
Well before the advent of e-books, we introduced a regime to keep our bookshelf at a specific size and capacity. This was partly to avoid our house becoming nothing but a maze of old books. For me book collections – ebook and otherwise – are a neural extension of our brains so it is important to keep them refreshed and honest. I have about 12 printed books that I will never get rid of for reasons of identity in time. As for the rest, too many of them represent good intentions rather than meaningful, life changing experience and as I never have time to put them in any kind of searchable order they are a bit like the Internet without a search engine. I am delighted now that if I have a sudden memory about something that I have read I know exactly where to find the book – on my tablet.
I use Kindle and Kobo, neither have stopped me buying books. When shopping I see a book, have a quick read of back cover, inside flap, then buy it. To me the electronic book and hard copy, complement each other. Why does it always have to be either, or ?
The written word is the main joy. Wasn`t that long ago we had to read from a slate!
I won’t stop buying books because I have an E-Reader. Books are, after all, more convenient in respect to availability when you’re on the road. (And they don’t need batteries or Internet connections or any of that stuff.) Also, there are books that I value because of their feel, their look, their smell. I’ll never get rid of those books.
So I won’t purge my library. But as I only buy books that have intrinsic aesthetic value as an object and buy my “daily bread” stories as ebooks, my library is seeing a rise in quality.
Yup. Paper books are dead to me. It’s time to leave the trees alone, let them grow and do their carbon sequestration job, creating oxygen job, and absorbing the energy from the sun. Physical books cannot die soon enough. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to have my Kindle.
Like Rina, well before I got my first eReader, I stopped hanging on to books. Three moves in two years lead me to “why an I hauling around these heavy boxes of books, most of which didn’t make a big impact on me?” Anything that didn’t touch me – meaning I thought I’d like to read it again – was donated, passed on to friends, etc. Keeping books as trophies is trapping ideas. Books are meant to be shared. To have multiple readers. To be given to a library, to be discovered at the back of a thrift shop.
While I use an eReader, it’s purely for the convenience. When I read a book on an eReader (whether borrowed from a library or bought) I think I’ll want to revisit, then I may purchase a hard copy to put on a shelf, to be treasured in the physical sense, or made available to visitors to my home to see what resonates with me.
I’ve been ereading for a long time now, having started with my first Palm Pilot (m105) back in 2002. I ended up with the Palm T|X and was sad to find out that I can no longer sync books to it with my new laptop, which runs Windows 7. I plan to get an ereader soon, but will have to root it to be able to put my books on it that I bought to read on Palm devices. Currently , I am reading on my cellbphone.
In the meantime, I have moved 6 times in the last 5 years and I am sick of lugging around hundreds of books. Add to that the fact that I am now 62 and I know neither of my children are interested in inheriting all my books. I have begun to purge my library and plan to keep less than 100 print books total. These will consist of my favorite author’s books (many of which are signed) and a few others that I know I will want to reread. Otherwise, I will just get ereader editions. I use ebookfling to borrow and lend books and will continue to use the local library for both digital editions and print editions.
WOW just what I was looking for. Came here by searching for book collecting