Quote:
Originally Posted by polbit
I remember my first "real" book - three musketeers, in a 1920s, leather-bound cover. An experience that made me appreciate books as a kid. I really don't see that happening with Kindle's edition of three musketeers  |
Often when I hear people wax poetic about the glories of the paper book, they are painting an image of some glorious wood-paneled library with walls full of leather-bound volumes. Cushy wing-back chair, fireplace, retriever at your feet. Basically the sort of thing you would expect to find in a stately home a hundred years ago. Let's face it. While some of us may have a handful of artisanal books gracing our shelves, the vast majority of the books we own are purely utilitarian vessels for text. Maybe they have an interesting cover, but very few books these days have decent paper or bindings. Even a $30 hardback is fuzzy printing on low-grade paper with a cloth binding. I've seen the book collections of my ephemeraphilic friends and they're full of mass market junk. They seem to be sentimental for the library they wish they had rather than the library they do have. The magic in their books is in the stories they contain, not the wood pulp and cheap ink.