Dead trees
Thesis: "A moderately extensive library of paper books is no longer a necessary signifier of a literate household."
Time was, if I saw a house with few or no books, I'd assume the occupants didn't spend much time reading. But I now spend far more time reading articles and technical references online than in magazines and textbooks, and we're starting to format shift from paper books to eBooks.
We've around 600 books in our library (or at least did until fairly recently), which puts us bang in the middle of the survey of household book counts I ran here a while back (though amusingly I suspect by the shape of the curve that around 5% of you have more than 5000 books but just haven't realised it). A lot of them are quite dusty though, and I'm much more dust sensitive than I used to be. I'm also not reading the same things as I much was, and there are many I'm not likely to revisit.
So I'm kind of wondering why I still have so many books, and why I'm so reluctant to cull things like classic text books I no longer refer to. (eta - hah, just reread the comment about classic texts in the earlier post I linked to above; looks like my position's shifting on that one. Anyone for a mint condition Foley and van Dam?)
Why do you keep books?
Time was, if I saw a house with few or no books, I'd assume the occupants didn't spend much time reading. But I now spend far more time reading articles and technical references online than in magazines and textbooks, and we're starting to format shift from paper books to eBooks.
We've around 600 books in our library (or at least did until fairly recently), which puts us bang in the middle of the survey of household book counts I ran here a while back (though amusingly I suspect by the shape of the curve that around 5% of you have more than 5000 books but just haven't realised it). A lot of them are quite dusty though, and I'm much more dust sensitive than I used to be. I'm also not reading the same things as I much was, and there are many I'm not likely to revisit.
So I'm kind of wondering why I still have so many books, and why I'm so reluctant to cull things like classic text books I no longer refer to. (eta - hah, just reread the comment about classic texts in the earlier post I linked to above; looks like my position's shifting on that one. Anyone for a mint condition Foley and van Dam?)
Why do you keep books?