My first job ever was in a used book store owned by friends of my parents. I enjoyed the experience and it no doubt influenced my personal view on the same subject. I firmly believe books (with the exception of the collectors and sentimentals) should be shared, passed on, given away etc. Thanks for an entertaining column.

Despite the convenience and frugality of digital copy now circulating, it’s an industry that shall follow the same path of the digitalization of music. Ultimately, while self-publishing will allow certain great writers their opportunity to ‘get the word out’, it will open the floodgate to thousands of people that shouldn’t use the keyboard to much of any creative end, and this has already begun. Though there are more distinctive lines between “good writing and bad writing” than there are between “good music and bad music”, my fear is that it’s all headed into the same deep post-modern pit, where inherent value is a thing of the past, standards are old hat, and the internet is king.

A while ago on eBay I bought a copy of Ignatius T.T. Donnelly’s “Atlantis: The Antediluvian World”. It’s a somewhat infamous book (considered pseudohistory), written by a Minnesota Populist, that believed Plato’s account of the city factual, and which ultimately became source for the majority of what we believe about the mythical nation today. Little did the seller or I know, but the book I received was a pristine first edition, straight from 1882 – complete with a gold inlay of Poseidon. It was neat by itself alone, but it was when I cracked the pages that I found inside preserved newspaper clippings of the explosion of Krakatoa the following year in 1883. Somebody had used the book to collect all sorts of pieces of extraneous news that might concern Atlantis. Somebody had thought that Atlantis might actually exist, and that signs of the myth were happening in their own time. This book and it’s contents were physical proof that someone out there, like me, was hoping that there were answers in fantasy – and that’s something priceless that can only happen in physical media.

God save the printed page. It’s the last bastion against eventual literary breakdown. When we lose that, humanity will have lost a part of its own soul.

I have books on my shelves that I loathe…but were passed along to me, dedicated, inscribed, dog-eared by the giver, or otherwise gifted to me in some way, shape or form. I disliked the book (sometimes) or lost connection with the person who gave me the book (most times) — yet I keep them on my shelf. They remind me of a mood, a moment.

I haven’t yet got an ereader. As much as I love digital toys, I really am resistant to reading books digitally. I love everything about a book as you’ve so beautifully described here.

I want to print this out, bind it and set it on my shelf…because it’s a story of YOU. Well done.

I like the blog man, keep it up. I’ll have to add it to my RSS feed so I can read it on my cold and lifeless eReader.