Quote:
Originally Posted by khalleron
Actually, I was thinking of the 3 million PD books on Google.
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Fair enough. No argument there. I was being more than a little facetious (hence the smiley).
I was thinking more about being a kid, where the first thing I'd do when dragged to the houses of friends of my parents would be go find the bookshelves and get lost in a book while the adults talked. Plus, the kind of books they had told me a bit of what kind of people they were.
I was also thinking about the fact that, with physical books, they remain after the original owner died, and are sometimes then discovered by others. I have a copy of
The Terhune Omnibus, a second printing from August 1945, with a book plate in the front and my father's name in his 10-year-old scrawl. It means something to me because it was something that he treasured, and finding it amongst his things gave me something emotional that I wouldn't get rummaging through the vast closet that is the Internet.
I love e-books, but legally, when we die, our e-book libraries die with us. You cannot leave an ebook (or a collection of ebooks) to a favorite child or grandchild; your license to an ebook ends when you do. They are not considered property (at least in the US).
With e-books, we gain things, but we lose things as well.