More on books

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

And yes, it is about love of reading vs. love of books as an object. Now, unlike dollraves, I actually love books as physical objects. prunesnprisms and I have had this discussion before - I love the act of sitting with a book, holding it my hands, turning the pages. I've never been able to embrace books in electronic format (although, as an aside, if you've not checked out Daily Lit, you should. A snippet of a book e-mailed to you each day, in totally coffee break sized chunks.) I've tried audio books, but I have trouble with them. My mind wanders and I miss huge chunks. They don't fit well into the small spaces of life into which I find that I can slide a few pages of the current book. But, as much as I love books and reading, I'm less and less enchanted with owning books.

My question came from a spark of a thought I had early yesterday when I was thinking thinking about shifting books. My logic brain said to me, "You know, you on't need to keep those two entire shelves of Stephen King books, you know" My lizard brain reacted in horror - "But I LOVE STEPHEN KING!" The first brain rolled its eyes at my lizard brain. "Yeah, and any single one of those books, you can find at the library. ANY ONE OF THEM. Hello, wildly popular modern writer? Are you on crack, lizard brain?" And I thought to myself, you know, that's true. There's a few I'd not get rid of, but the ironic reality here is that I don't even own a lot of my true favorites - I read them when I was a teenager off my mom's bookshelves, and never bought copies of my own. Many of the ones I have I read when I got them and have not opened again. But you see what prompted the question. And of course, it's true for nearly every other book on my shelves. I bet easily 95% of them could be found at the library, or through ILL. I didn't have a lot of time to post yesterday, so it was a weirdly brief pop up question, I realize.

( Navel gazing, feel free to skip )