Books

tim wood

I find the "Currently Reading" forum interesting to visit from time-to-time. I thank the regular posters there for pointing out interesting books, some few of which I've got, read, learned from, and am the better for.

But for a number of reasons books just are not the same as they were even twenty years ago, or before. Of course the several main reasons being the internet, the internet, and the internet. It makes it difficult to determine just exactly what readers do, these days. For example, readers used to have books. When in my own student/gypsy days, living sub-optimally as a student and without much free time, I still had 1000+ books. Now maybe 100, and only those that interest me.

And I use the library a lot. It took me years and much money before I appreciated the wisdom of Bacon's homily on "consuming" books. But I won't read a book online or on a kindle device. And of books I'm interested in owning, I check Amazon and then Abebooks.

I'm interested here in how TPF readers, those who really read, handle and manage their book "life." Do you have books? How many? On shelves or stacked on every other horizontal surface? Do you buy books? A lot of books? Or is it the library, school or local? Or a bookstore? There used to be, probably not now, a philosophy bookstore near Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, near Chicago. Nothing but philosophy, and more than a few dusty dust-covers. But all new books. And near Harvard Square, near Harvard, is the Harvard (no relation) Bookstore. With a very respectable philosophy section.

Do you fill your books with marginal notes? Talk with your books? Spill coffee on them? Take them with you on trips? Fight with your cat to read them? Wake up with them still on your chest?

I fear that those who are more-or-less bibliophiles are dinosaurs, and apart from certain preserves, have been dying out of the general population where many people neither have nor read any books.

If you feel moved to compose a mini-essay on your own book life/idiosyncrasies, or books in general, here you will have at least one interested reader. .

TheMadFool

I have plenty of books but the vast majority of them are soft copies. I read them in fits and starts and on most occasions I lose the plot mostly due to my irritating habit of switching between them halfway through.

Olivier5

I read less and less, but always hard copies. I like the physical thing in my hand. I like to ‘harm’ it, too. To fold pages, to let rain or coffee spoil a few pages, etc, because it becomes like a living being a bit.

I find notes in the margin impractical as I rarely read the same book twice.

Once, in a remote location with some time on our hand, a friend and I started reading the same book. It was a thick compendium of crime novellas by Léo Malet - cheap, funny ‘pulp fiction’ with anarchist undertones. I was somewhere in the middle of the book, perhaps at the 6th or 7th crime story, when he started reading it too. He had finished his own book. One week later we had to part, i was going off to another place and he had to stay. Both of us wanted the book pretty badly. Like a bookish St Martin, I took a knife and cut the binder in two so that my friend could go on reading his novellas, and I could finish mine.

Streetlight

I was gifted a kindle the other day so now I'm tearing through all these 80-150 pages books that I cbf spending money on and it's great.

Jamal

I left a few hundred books stored in boxes in Scotland when I took up my itinerant life in 2012 and had to get a kindle. I went back to hard copies recently and it has triggered a new enthusiasm for reading, but I'm disappointed at how bad the print quality and font sizes are in many printed books--no doubt my eyesight has deteriorated over the past few years. On a kindle I can adjust the font size, and I have a backlight that doesn't disturb my sleeping wife, so I'm going back to kindle except for books that just feel a lot better in printed form: big complex books and those with pictures or diagrams.

I love buying and possessing books but I'm aware that this probably shallow acquisitiveness disappears when I actually get into reading one. Or rather, it's independent of the experience of reading: the book I'm into is no longer interesting from the acquisitive standpoint, which turns towards other, newer, immaculate and shiny books.

That's how I tend to end up with many more books than I can possibly read. If I didn't live in a foreign country with only a couple of English-language bookshops and no Amazon, I would have lost control of this tendency some time ago.

If they're paperbacks, the books I read do not remain immaculate and shiny. Among other bad habits, I use the page corners--say 20 pages together--to clean my nails.

Take them with you on trips? — tim wood

If I'm going away for a day or two, yes, but not generally when I'm leaving the house. I don't understand how people can walk and read, or even read in public at all. I can't not look at and listen to what's around me. For reading I prefer to be alone in a quiet place where there's no risk of being disturbed, and no extraneous stimulation.

Benkei

I'm an avid ereader. I would like the A4 sizes for ereaders to become more affordable to be able to read books with pictures and diagrams as well.

I don't read physical books anymore to save paper plus it doesn't require a light when reading while the wife is sleeping. And to be honest, I prefer the ereader in general as well. No mushy romantic feels for hardcopies from me.

Streetlight

I would like the A4 sizes for ereaders to become more affordable to be able to read books with pictures and diagrams as well. — Benkei

This! I held off getting a kindle because I have a big pdf library and was worried that some books would be too squinty to read. Found a way around it with some clever open source software but it would be great to have an A4 reader that didn't cost as much as an iPad.

Benkei

↪StreetlightX

I'm considering this one for Christmas: https://remarkable.com/store/remarkable-2

Streetlight

↪Benkei

Wooof that looks gorgeous but is even more pricey!

Benkei

↪StreetlightX

It seems to be cheaper. 400 EUR is 470 USD and the Boox is 550 USD at current exchange rates. Or maybe you get different pricing than I do. :chin:

Streetlight

↪Benkei

Ooh, the remakable website displays prices in AUD (for me) - I just assmued it was USD as the whole damn internet is. You're right, it is cheaper. I still think the price point is crazy high considering you can get an iPad for similar price. Trade off between specialization and generality, but still technically speaking these readers do alot less.

There's a gap in the market for a sub USD$250 A4 eReader I swear.

Benkei

↪StreetlightX

Yeah. Not going to happen soon I'm afraid. E-ink is hella expensive and doesn't have many other applications (unlike LCD which is tablets, monitors, TVs, watches, babyphones etc.). The upside is some important patents have expired a few years ago so some drop might be expected.

Jack Cummins

↪tim wood

While I am not someone who likes spending life mostly on digital devices I feel that having a kindle has been revolutionary for my reading life.

During the past 5 years I have been able to access so many books than ever before, although I am aware that it is so easy to get hold of them on Amazon. But I have got most of the fiction classics and many philosophy classics free and have got many books which have not been made into paper books. I have about 750 books on my kindle and if I go away somewhere I can take this whole library with me.

But I have not abandoned paper books. I probably have about 150 after getting rid of about 300 to charity shops. It is still nice to hold a paper book and have a nice bookmark. I like to take a book out with me and stay out reading it from cover to cover, even if this means coming home after midnight. Flatmates are curious where I have been and a bit disappointed to know that my date was with a book.

Of course, the worst impact of ebooks is that it has affected the bookshops. Like the record shops so many have had to close down( I still prefer a physical music collection to an Ipod or streaming).

It also affects writing directly. It is so much easier to write a book and publish it oneself. This is good but it does mean that some of the books which are available are not that great, especially fiction. But I think that it is a good thing that it is easier to create books because it cuts out a lot of the bureaucracy which writers face.

Mww

↪tim wood

I was gifted a Kindle when they first came out, made the typical non-professional evolution from pc to laptop to notebook, finally getting the Kindle for IPAD a few years ago. There’s 64 non-fiction books on here, mostly niche authors of a certain era, alongside a smattering of that new-fangled technical stuff from the first half of the 20th century.

But, as you say, there are a couple very special books for which electronics just won’t do, and for these I’ve done due diligence and obtained the oldest, rarest ones I could find, with the help of an antique bookseller living just down the road. You know what, and you know who, and I’m not saying what those cost me!!

Streetlight

The upside is some important patents have expired a few years ago so some drop might be expected. — Benkei

Was just reading about this. Super interesting. A case of bad timing right now. Aie.

Benkei

↪StreetlightX

The Remarkable 2 doesn't have a backlight. Not buying it then. :cry:

Jamal

↪Benkei

reMarkable seems to be first and foremost an e-writer, rather than an e-reader. That would put me off if I was looking primarily for a reader. Looks great though.

Benkei

↪jamalrob

That's true. My use case would ideally be for both work (legal stuff; annotating contracts mostly) and reading on my own time. I'd still buy it if my employer would be prepared to foot 50% of the bill. I'm not sure they can support it at work though as a BYOD.

EDIT: although admittedly, a 28 inch screen where I can put two document up at the same time is useful too when drafting so really, really ideally I could switch between the two on the fly.

Srap Tasmaner

manage their book "life." — tim wood

There is no evidence this is something I can manage. I read much less than I'd like, but in practice what that really means is that I read and don't read in waves. The book buying follows that pattern. Often I acquire books in chunks. Ran out of shelves so long ago I stopped caring almost as long ago. I do still do some deliberate and some incidental rearranging of what's on a shelf or in a box or stacked on a table based on my interest at the moment.

I read a goodish amount online, papers and such, but I still don't do ebooks and doubt I ever will. They're both just technologies and paper suits the way I use books much better.

When I was young, I was not above a little underlining or a star in the margin. Now, never. The only thing I still do, and that pretty rarely, is make my own index inside the back cover or thereabouts. (If there's a quote I know I'll want later, I jot a key phrase from it and the page number. There's usually only a few.)

Have hardly used a library since I left school. I have sometimes joked that I'm not even sure I can read a book that I don't own.

For me the comparative ease of getting books these days is staggering. I remember when I was kid ordering books from the university bookstore: I would dig through those huge volumes of Books in Print to find all the info needed to fill out a little card for the nice woman at the desk and then a month or so later I would get a postcard saying my book had arrived. There were out-of-print books I used to look for for years on end, checking the used bookstores in whatever town I was in just in case.

Banno

My copy of Inquiries into truth and interpretation's spine broke, for the second time, yesterday. I could pick up another copy for a few dollars, but the marginalia!

Caldwell

I'm interested here in how TPF readers, those who really read, handle and manage their book "life." Do you have books? How many? On shelves or stacked on every other horizontal surface? Do you buy books? A lot of books? Or is it the library, school or local? Or a bookstore? — tim wood

I have a small book shelf -- it's filled with books, but small. So I don't have a lot of books-- just a realistic number. But I like all of them. All Philosophy, lol.

I bought them. I used to use the library, but since I've been really busy with work -- and it's mentally exhausting -- I have stopped going to the library. Lately I have been trying to get back to spending time reading in my spare time, but with work, exams, etc., I just couldn't do it on a regular basis. I plan on becoming more involved in Philosophy once I've completed other things.

tim wood

I could pick up another copy for a few dollars, but the marginalia! — Banno

And there you have it, it seems to me, the track of the dinosaur across a book he's ravaged with marginalia. Such books often the possession of academics, professors, sometimes teachers, who may have documented in the margins of their books a decades long dialogue with the book. This how some books should be read, "Chewed and digested.., read wholly and with diligence and attention." And owned.

It appears from most of the above posts that as a group, we don't read that way. Maybe three of us, or four. And that's interesting because it would seem that books have over a scant generation become consumables, like highway restaurant food, and not the things sought out, kept, valued, and used. Perhaps because it has become too inefficient to use some books.

And It may be because much that is of value now is new, is the new, the old in many areas being outdated, even within a few years, my astronomy textbook an example.

It begs the question, why read? Of course entertainment, for information, to learn. The internet itself has taught me how hollow mere entertainment is, which has infected my reading of mysteries and whodunits. Some of those are very good, but if not very good, then the three hours or so spent seem a bitter waste. For information, and I have a few of those books left, mostly about things I never did nor will do, but like to think about doing. Finally, to learn. And I'm officially too old to learn, but rich in appreciation of the process, the encounter, the experience. Most simply, the good thought, thinking, well expressed - the relationship. Of course good, worthwhile, enduring relationships require an appropriate investment of at least time and energy. A book, then, a good book, is not just that thing over there, either dead in itself or having the life-span of a May-fly, to be thrown out when read, but rather in its ideas like a piece of music that one can learn, and having learned, play over again in mind, to own, enjoy, use whenever one wants, and even as with an old acquaintance, renew that acquaintance with new questions and ideas as they occur.

Kevin

I've always taken notes on a separate sheet of paper if I thought a book worth highlighting or making margin notes - mostly to preserve the condition, I guess, and because having read some of my old notes on first reads of a work from years ago - realizing a question to have been dumb, I was glad it was not permanently tattooed on a page. Also for books with good reread value - I end up noticing new things every read such that old highlights might detract from new observations and/or if the whole book ends up worth highlighting I'd just end up highlighting nothing or underlining on top of highlighting.

tim wood

realizing a question to have been dumb, I was glad it was not permanently tattooed on a page. — Kevin

To laugh! But perhaps a serious note, as with all good laughs: that one ought not fear to risk the dumb question, for lots of reasons.

Kevin

↪tim wood

That's fair.

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