I read and enjoy eBooks. They are inexpensive, convenient, and so easy to purchase.
And yet I remain a dinosaur. There is something about having a physical book close by that calms me. When the pain in my back creeps up, when I’m overwhelmed by life and work, there is nothing that calms me more than standing before a wall of books.
Looking at my shelves lets me take a deep breath and relax. Visiting a physical bookstore can do the same thing. And a trip to the library is as good as visiting a monastery. Just seeing a stack of books reminds me in some deep way that there are things to read and to think about, and I relax.
Looking at a screen doesn’t have the same effect on me. I can page through the virtual shelves on my iPad and see the seemingly countless titles displayed before me. It’s not calming. It’s interesting, but doesn’t help me to let go.
It’s not magical. It’s not the innate features of a physical book. It’s my history, my experience that makes it so.
It’s hard to think of my life without physical books. They are just things, but they are also my shrine. They are icons in the true sense of the word.
And as long as I have space, I’ll buy them, read them, and, when they deserve it, place them on my shelves. When I’m out of space I’ll visit them in libraries, our great cathedrals of hope and knowledge.
Take Two Books And Call Me In The Morning by Randy Murray, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.