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242 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 8 Dec \ on: Do you prefer ebooks over books? BooksAndArticles
I used to have a twenty-foot tall bookcase that was full of books. I built it into my stairwell. I really loved those books. I had a very hard to find copy of the journals of a Tasmanian missionary who was also a jerk; I had every book by William Vollmann, I had several shelves of 1970s scifi; everything Steinbeck published; three copies of Catch-22; the complete collection of Robert E Howard; numerous journals of Arctic explorers; and a paperback copy of Wisconsin Death Trip.
I don't own any books now.
My conversion to ebooks happened in this way: I like the convenience of getting things right away and being able to access them instantly.
That said, I don't like ebooks as much as I like webpages.
I resonate with essentially all you wrote.
Because of physical constraints (lack of space and frequent space relocation), I had to stop collecting physical books/comics/mangas/magazines well before ebooks (and tablets/smartphone on which to read them) were as good and as widespread as they are now. It has been dramatic for a long time. I loved (and still love) to physically manipulate written words and images, and I absolutely adore the quest for finding them in new libraries or old/weird/hidden second-hand markets.
However, with the passage of time and the advancement of technology, I started realizing that digital reading is more efficient, it is better adapted to my cataloguing/labelling/annotating brain, especially with the help of software like Zotero and Obsidian, and allows me to be as ruthless as I want when I read out of home because I do not have to select in advance what I'll be reading.
Obviously, if I had adequate surplus of space and purchasing power, I would definitely indulge myself in collecting a lot of books/comics/mangas/magazines, but making sure I also have digital copies (and multiple backups).
Finally, I am still wrapping my head on the webpages>e-books relation you mentioned. At first, I instinctively disagreed. Now, I think I get what you mean, and perhaps I have to say I actually agree. The fact that you could also get something like an e-book/webpage like:
is an even more evident support of your thesis. The real problem is that I do not know something like Zotero to save locally and organize websites (and automatically update entries).
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