Quote:
Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel
what you say is true of good quality books, sure. if you buy nice hardcovers (or good quality paperbacks, with sewn bindings and good paper) then a book can be quite durable.
however, my books are not stored in particularly extreme conditions (i live here too after all) but still, i have countless not-that-old paperbacks which are literally falling to pieces : the glue of the binding doesn't hold anymore, so the pages fall out in clumps or individually, and the paper is yellow and brittle and sometimes just turning the page is enough to tear it, or the corner will actually break off in my fingers (and before you say it, i have a gentle touch).
the problem is a lot of books are not made to last and i think often people don't make the distinction. some are, and i won't dispute that ; i also have some very nice books on good quality paper (which is still white and not brittle) and i think i can count on keeping them for many years to come, hopefully my whole life, for some of them. i'm not saying that books are all so poorly made and so fragile that the slightest exposure to indirect sunlight for more than 30 seconds will cause them to disintegrate. but they *are* nonetheless fragile, and some of them are not made to last, and those ones will certainly be outlived by digital media as long as you take the minimum precaution to keep access to it ; much like there are certain precautions you must take to preserve paper books.
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The Brothers Karamazov (Everyman's Library, hardcover)
This is the kind of book (binding) one [that is, I] would like to see more.
That said, there is a (i think Library of Congress) standard that some books claim to adhere to for "long-lastingness" [or something].
Anyway, buying hardcovers from amazon US was very rewarding for me last year (as a dutch national) because of the marvellous euro<>dollar exchange rate (especially when it was at ~1:1,55), so I got quite a few of these volumes for something like €10 each, ex shipping (which wasn't that much either)