Hacker News Reader

I'll bring in another perspective. I'm in a huge dilemma.

I love books. I also like paper books, but I believe that in the long run we're better off without them for economic and environmental reasons, and e-books are a pretty darned good alternative. I think that the inherent value of a book is its contents. Whether it is tangible or not doesn't matter as much.

Because of this, I think book romanticism is pretty stupid. However, I can't help but feel captivated by it. I have a few theories on why this may be so:

I do like that my books are tangible possessions, that I can look back at the notes my father made into them in college, that I can find an old train pass I used as a bookmark that brings back memories. Or I know that that mark is from when I spilled coffee all over my theory of computation book when I fell asleep studying for the final. I associate my books with other things, thoughts. Currently this doesn't quite work this way with e-books. That's why they don't feel "personal". This can be remedied, but I don't know to what extent.

I don't give a damn about big box stores, but I care very much about my local stores. The difference is in experience. When I'm buying a book, I don't want to feel like I'm a standardized entity there to benefit a company whose sole purpose is to maximize profits. The alternative to this what I can only describe as "intellectual flirtation".

Example: Today I happened to have some free time and I wandered into my favorite bookstore. I looked around, grabbed a book about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and sat in a corner reading for an hour. No one nagged me to buy anything. The book was well written but it wasn't as comprehensive as I hoped, so I moved to the fiction section, and onto mathematics, dipping into books as I wished. Finally, I found a book about the role of Tea in Japanese culture and decided to buy it. While I was paying, the cashier struck up a conversation with me about the book itself and we had a small debate about the topic and he also recommended another author to me.

Now, as you can see the act of going to a bookstore is not a thing I do just to buy books. I do it so I can have a change of scenery and pace, relax, learn and have some personal time to just think (when do we do that, seriously?). I also do it because it's profoundly social (i.e. not web 2.0 style "me too" social). I like conversing about the things I find interesting, and it seems bookstores gather people like me, whether they work there or just visit to buy. Finally, the cost of all this is a possible few extra dollars on my book.

It's a tough choice for me.

Romanticism is just that: a love for something because of what you believe it to be about: every nuance that makes an experience or thing what it is. Thus, romanticism is quite opinionated. To call it 'stupid' is a little harsh, but I won't rip you up about it like I wanted to (as someone who likes books).

To say books are an environmental detriment is incorrect; wood (paper) is one of the most renewable of resources, and when harvested responsibly (as is done in the US on the whole), it actually creates a net of more trees planted than would otherwise exist in our modern society.

Arguably, the plastics and battery chemicals of ebook readers is more damaging to our planet. Not that I think it's a particular concern.

To your last three paragraphs, I agree.

It's definitely an environmental detriment and I think you're overstating how responsibly it's being done. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_paper

In the grand scheme of things though, you're definitely better off trading in the SUV than worrying about the environmental footprint of your personal library.

I agree paper is a significant problem, but books are a really small portion of it, because they tend to be fairly durable goods. The vast majority of paper waste is in disposable things like newspapers, magazines, toilet paper, paper towels, advertisement circulars, etc.

Every week I probably throw out* a half-kilo of ads stuffed into my mailbox, one circular every week from every major grocery and department-store chain in the area. It would only take a few months to accumulate as much paper in grocery-store ads as all the books I've bought in my life.

* Well, I recycle it, but afaik the recyclability of glossy/coated paper is fairly poor/inefficient.

Something you might be interested is what happens with our recycling once it hits the curb. I was completely blown away when I heard about this (Toronto specific article, but I imagine you have a similar process south of the border).

http://www.thestar.com/article/584523

I agree though, my common sense tells me that books are probably not a real contributor, but I couldn't say for sure without researching it a bit (I've been surprised before).

On romanticism: I guess I was being too harsh. My point was that it doesn't really make any practical or economic sense for me to romanticize about books, but I can't help it anyway. (Which now seems self evident when you point out the definition of romanticism like that.)

Interesting about the environmental aspect. What about all the waste though? I guess it gets recycled eventually.

I buy about 20-30 books per year and probably 100 rolls of toilet paper. If you haven't stopped using toilet paper, I wouldn't worry about your library. Not buying books for environmental reasons is for the overwhelming majority of lifestyles optimizing in the wrong place.

It's rare for a person to read more than a couple thousand books in a lifetime. That's under 2 cubic meters of space total. That's massively dwarfed by the amount of waste that we generate in a lifetime. I'd need about 3 years worth of books to fill up a trash bag.

The interesting point is how little of the positive bookstore experience you describe actually involved taking the book home. It seems to me that there might be a niche for something that is a cross between a bookstore, a library and the old Edwardian gentleman's club - a space with books and coffee/bar that is supported by subscriptions (and drink sales) as much as actual book sales, and where the books are curated to some extent for their interest to the membership rather than commercial value. I'd pay a monthly fee to be able to go hang out in a nice space full of books that are selected to be interesting (to me!) rather than stuff like "Chicken Soup for the Soul" and the latest fad diet.

Sort of a bookstore version of HN, I suppose.

I would sign up for this! A gentleman's club sounds elitist - which is one way of keeping "community quality" up I suppose. But to me it's a rather ugly and exclusive way of doing it. Ideally, the audience would self select. The people who wouldn't fit the place and mindset wouldn't want to come in the first place. I don't even know how to begin to think about how one would come about doing that or how one would start such a community and expect people to come and socialize, though.

To clarify, I did not mean to indicate elitism by mentioning gentlemen's clubs - rather their social purpose, which is in fact close to how many people use Starbucks or other wi-fi coffee shops today: somewhere to go instead of going home, where you can get a drink and something to eat and spend some quality time with your laptop, or socialize if you are so minded. If you paid a subscription, you wouldn't feel bad about occupying a table as long as you wanted, and the bandwidth would be better :-)

Oh, <i>yeah</i>.

Totally.

When are you opening?

Maybe a more literary, less alcoholic version of the Elk's Lodges and other fraternal organizations? I would love to see a revival of these groups, which are right now dominated by unfriendly old men getting wasted on cheap drinks.

So I can't edit my own post for some reason, but I think I found something in this vein:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/boston-athenaeum-boston

A bit old timey but they do have a great book and art collection, a reading room, a separate room to just read newspapers, discussion events. They also lend iPads and kindles to members.

There is something of a low brow version of this in Japan - manga kissa - But they evolved into a refuge for the working homeless, runaway teenager, salaryman wanting porn while out pretending to be drumming up sales... Very weird but a cheap place to sleep when traveling on a shoestring.

Totally agreed, in fact I was about to suggest a similar idea.

For those who live in Tokyo, this might be interesting, but I want the one without such a superficial academic style: http://www.academyhills.com/library/index.html

I wrote about 'mental gyms' some time ago - http://michaelkimsal.com/blog/mental-gyms/ - but I think I prefer the social aspect of your idea more :)

The London Library, a private library in London's St James Square ( the heart of London's gentleman's clubland ) is a well established version of this ideal. http://www.londonlibrary.co.uk/

" The London Library is now the world's largest independent lending library. It owes its foundation in 1841 to the vision of Thomas Carlyle, who in many ways remains its tutelary genius. But he was not alone in his desire to establish an institution which would allow subscribers to enjoy something of the wealth of a national library for use in their own homes: the Earl of Clarendon, that enlightened early-Victorian politician, was the Library's first president, Thackeray its first auditor; Gladstone and Sir Edward Bunbury were on the first committee. Early members included Dickens and George Eliot. The Library's long-standing role at the centre of the intellectual life of the nation is reflected in the roll-call of its past presidents and vice-presidents, which include Tennyson, Kipling, T. S. Eliot, Rebecca West and Isaiah Berlin. The Library's current president is Sir Tom Stoppard.

The Library stands at the north-west corner of St James's Square, as it has since 1845, after briefly occupying the first floor of the Travellers Club in Pall Mall

So this is me talking completely free form on a topic I know nothing about, but here is my conjecture anyway (because I find it interesting).

I think there is a tendency in people to totemize things. This makes a certain amount of sense -- they get attached to thier tools, because they are competent with them. But more than that, they attach memories to them, as you suggest. This is more than just with books: I certainly mourn the passing of keyboards, it takes a while to get the feel to even another one of the same model. I also have a certain affinity towards one old beaten up shovel I garden with, despite the abundance of better choices in the world.

An interesting thing I learned once, is that people are very good at learning by associating various bits of knowledge with places -- to the point that sometimes they only know some things in some places. This make sense, and there is plenty written on it.

I wonder if combining the two notions results in this affinity for books -- a combination of keeping knowledge and thoughts and feelings in the place (the book) and our love of our tools (I mean really, my new copy of APUE just doesn't do it for me the way my old worn in one did -- that one had a presence, this one just has some information, and I'm almost certain it doesn't know as much about ttys as the last one did :P ).

Anyway all that aside -- there is another aspect to physical book we must consider: scent -- books have scent and the brain is wired to respond subconsiously to various aromas. I am certain that if you grow up and love books, the smell of them has special place in your emotional processing centers. (seriously, a mysterious tome of arcane computer knowledge smells different than a well loved novel, and certainly a forgotten volume from the used book seller has a different aura than a new edition from B&N, which in turn is different from the same edition from Amazon).

Finally, maybe there is some aspect to books that comes from the refinement of the technology for a thousand years. The book is a highly polished technology - and it shows.

Anyway, enough rambling. Thanks for engaging my thinker :)

I love books. I also like paper books, but I believe that in the long run we're better off without them for economic and environmental reasons, and e-books are a pretty darned good alternative. I think that the inherent value of a book is its contents. Whether it is tangible or not doesn't matter as much.

I disagree, at least until e-books get much, much better. Dead tree books are still easier for me to read in a number of ways (ranging from actual ease of transferring information from the medium to the brain to not having the ability to open up TVTropes on my dead trees to the easy visual indicator letting me know that I've only got a couple more pages or that I should maybe stop for the night). I can quickly and easily jot down notes in the margin that are both apparent and easy to read on further rereads (the copy of The Count of Monte Cristo I have annotated over the years is a dear treasure to me) and I've yet to see anything that works so well in electronic form. Perhaps the most difficult thing to fix, though, is simply the way memory works. It often happens that I will want to reread a certain scene (or bit of information, in the case of nonfiction) but I don't really remember any good keywords from the scene, so an e-book search wouldn't do much good. Nevertheless, a strong visual memory is very helpful here: I'm usually able to quickly turn to the appropriate part of the book and start investigating bottom halves of left pages or what have you. From my experience, this same sort of search is far more tedious and less effective on e-books as they are today.

Now, is any of this universal? I hardly think so. It's not really complete, though, and I'm willing to bet that a large number of avid readers have their necessary features where e-books are lacking, and these extend beyond simple romanticism. I mean, sure, there is a lot of romanticism also buried in there (ever notice how the olfactory experience is so much richer with books than with Kindles?), but it's hardly the whole picutre.

That's not to say that e-books can't catch up to alleviate some of these issues, but I find it borderline ridiculous to say that there's no inherent value in the tangibility of a book.

>But I won't cry for the passing of the big-box stores if they're bent on becoming the Wal-Mart of reading.

There's likely some bad decision making behind a move towards a 'Wal-Mart-ification' of the big-box stores, but are you sure they could have survived if they tried to compete with the advantages of a warehouse full of diverse stock and shelf space that is virtual and costs nothing to expand by adding pages (ala Amazon).

It seems to me that they've acted more like fish in a pond that's been drying up. Struggling to stay in a deep enough spot to keep breathing.

I get a better price, better selection and more information browsing Amazon, but I'm not about to blame the physical book stores for going out of business because they changed, man.

Many stores have become worse in the exact same way, but the bookstores have been bitten by it sooner than some others. Stores started, even before the economic downturn, to not carry items that are niche or infrequently needed. Sure, many of the items that are still there were bought most, or brought better margin, but the reason people went there without question was because the niche items were there, too.

Electronic stores are another example of the same thing, and IMO, have been hurt because of it. There are a lot of short-term gains for long-term losses.

I think consumers warmed to buying on the internet because the local stores failed them. They were willing to pay the premium and were scared of and disliked online transactions. Now, the cat is out of the bag.

Some of this was due to commercial real estate prices shooting up but a good amount was their own doing.

Have you noticed that many brands, in many different markets, that had the biggest following 10 to 15 years ago are some of the worst now? They rid the brand to death for short-term gains. Now, I take a good look at the less-known brands before ever thinking of going with the big traditional names.

They've gotten worse.

Borders was a revelation when it showed up on Rockville Pike outside Washington. I was delighted when it came to downtown at 18th & L NW. But during the last several years I could see (for example) the poetry shelves squeezing down from most of two free-standing chest-height shelves to part of one; the history section much compressed; the computing shelves progressively thinner and less organized.

I've only lived in the DC area for 6 mo. or so, but I've been to the Borders in Silver Spring, North Bethesda, Bethesda, and downtown and thought they were horrible, at least on price and probably on selection too. The B&N near Metro Center, on the other hand, had a much better selection when I went there for the first time last weekend. I found at least 4 books I wanted - however, I buy everything from Amazon (lower prices, or used books) and put them all on my wish list there.

It's been almost six months since borders filed for bankruptcy, and they were having cash flow problems before that. Many suppliers have been insisting on cash terms, which must have put a serious dent in their stocks. I was at a borders last week looking for a brand new Stross hardcover that I was willing to pay full price for but they didn't have it. An employee said they wouldn't be getting it, yet they definitely would have in years past.

I remember the Borders in Springfield VA having grad-level CS textbooks. Now it's just heartbreakingly depressing.

I suspect bookstores are about the same (at least Borders & B&N haven't seemed terribly different to me than they were in the 90s). The difference is that alternative ways of buying books (Amazon, ebooks, etc.) have gotten much, much better, so bookstores look much worse in comparison.

The Wal-Mart model is what you get when profit margins are collapsing towards zero. There isn't the surplus sloshing around to support more than a few big players in the market, skilled staff, or worthy but unpopular products.

* Crome Yellow (no "h")

The issue IMHO is that:

1) their buyers, who are the people that decide what each store stocks, deteriorated from "people who knew books" to "people who knew inventory control" ; as a result, the bookstore selection has gotten markedly worse as you have noticed.

2) they have suffered from a lack of seriousness in approaching what a good bokstore should be. Instead of being true to themselves and having an excellent book selection, they add "features" like a coffee shop, games, paper and pens, etc. all of which dilutes their original purpose.

It's not the stores as much as it's the publishers and editors. The good editors are long retired, and what's left are the MBA's that are creaming their jeans to find the next hot vampire / zombie / weresomething romance trend.

The current crop of publishers and editors are operating without the vaguest hint of a clue. We're in a slump, but I'm not sure when (or even if) we're going to see any kind of recovery.

I'm pretty sure I know how to solve the problem, but nobody would like the answer.

I would like to hear the answer.