Having grown up in the pre-Internet era, I have a fondness for tangible things, or “things made of things” as a friend once described it. This applies doubly for paper1, particularly books. And while I understand the advantages of digital books—to paraphrase Zoolander, “Digital Scale is so HOT right now!”—they have never clicked for me. Part of it stems from having to hold/charge/manage/remember another gadget. Part of it relates to the lack of set pagination (I remember passages by where they sit on a page). But probably most of it has to do with muscle memory, the thousands upon thousands of hours I’ve spent holding a book in my hand and reading.
So, here are three interesting things that may re-kindle (no pun) or deepen your love of paper books. And for extra credit, visit the comments and list three books you’re reading, recently read or that have stayed on your mind of late. (I list mine below.)
1) If you’re tired of shopping on Amazon for whatever reason (janky interface2, destructive economics3, #Bezos), consider BookShop.org, which allows you to directly support local bookstores of your choice, or buy from the site and contribute to a general support fund for all independent stores. I started using it recently and have found the switch from “Prime expectations” to be easier than I expected (this has also been true when ordering from our local, Book People).
2) Finding new books can be a challenge, or at least for me, narrowing down the list to something manageable. Both Book of the Month and Just the Right Book deliver something new to you each month; BoM allows you to choose from five titles and JtRB sends one based on your interests. It’s an elegant substitute for a personal relationship in a physical store.
3) If you’re at all like me, you might be apt to “occasionally” dive deep into a topic and buy several books at once.4 Usually, I find recommendations via articles or podcasts, but a close friend of mine recently turned me on to Five Books, a website that helps you discover and curate shorter lists. The topics go deep. Here are lists for Game Theory, Evolutionary Psychology, Postcolonial Literature, and Long-Term Thinking.
BONUS LINKS!!!
B1) If the quote “a book is a machine to think with” attracts your attention, check out this profile of I.A. Richards, an early-20th-century, British Literature professor whose views on cognition presaged modern cognitive science
B2) I’ve read “A Gentleman in Moscow” three times now and intend to keep going…it’s that good…and here’s an informative sixty minutes of the author, Amor Towles, discussing the novel
B3) Take a quick trip in the Way-Way Back Machine and remember how most of learned that Reading Is Fundamental
Album covers, magazines, posters/prints, packaging, etc.
Hopefully, I’m not just being an overly sensitive design nerd here. But I find Amazon to be an ugly site and not very easy to use when searching for items. It’s amazingly easy to buy things, though.
Amazon pretty much sells books at cost. Impossible for independent stores to do that. And I believe that local businesses play an important role in a town’s/city’s culture.
Whether all those get read or sit in a pile is another matter.
This was a great post! My three books:
1) "A Gentleman in Moscow": This book is about SO MUCH more than simply an admittedly wonderful gentleman in Moscow. It's about friendship, adapting to change, comporting oneself with dignity, platonic love, amorous love, familial love, the perils of absolutism, the value of art and conversation, one-eyed cats and more.
2) "Third Wave": I won't ever finish this one. The examples Tofler gives to support his hypothesis are too outdated to be that useful but the overall concept very much applies today.
3) "Spent: Sex, Evolution and Consumer Behavior": Written by Geoffrey Miller, this one goes deep into how evolutionary drivers impact our behavior in the economic realm. I've not finished it but have read most of it a few times.