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I've come to a conclusion that a mix of paper+ebooks works best for me. Physical books have a number of advantages that I don't see being available in ebooks any time soon or ever:
- Navigation. You don't always want to read linearly, and you don't always know where do you want to land. It's very easy to jump around _randomly_ over a physical book. This works well for things like poetry or religious books, but I also use this for technical literature of high value.
- Limited to a single book. To those with attention issues, you are reading a single book and can't switch to another or browse your library, etc.
- Higher chance to grab your attention. If you have a book that is sitting on your shelf, there is higher chance that it will be noticed and taken, than for one that is buried in your e-library. An important extension to this is that if you want someone to read something, you can get them a physical representation of that book as a present.
- Sometimes there is no good e-book version, only bad scans
- Illustrations, e-ink is still quite bad for full colour big pictures. It's a rare case for things like maps, anatomy, etc.
- Special editions, for aesthetics or collecting purposes, but it's not really about reading.
So my formula is: if I know I want to read a book multiple times, non-linearly, want to give it as a present, or lend it for reading, I'll choose physical book. I.e. the value of the physical book should not decline over time.
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