This is so obvious to me but more than once I have hit the typical robot HN user on this topic for whom it doesn't matter the medium because he's an eidetic machine. So I'll just post this:
> Beyond treating individual letters as physical objects, the human brain may also perceive a text in its entirety as a kind of physical landscape. When we read, we construct a mental representation of the text in which meaning is anchored to structure. The exact nature of such representations remains unclear, but they are likely similar to the mental maps we create of terrain—such as mountains and trails—and of man-made physical spaces, such as apartments and offices. Both anecdotally and in published studies, people report that when trying to locate a particular piece of written information they often remember where in the text it appeared. We might recall that we passed the red farmhouse near the start of the trail before we started climbing uphill through the forest; in a similar way, we remember that we read about Mr. Darcy rebuffing Elizabeth Bennett on the bottom of the left-hand page in one of the earlier chapters.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-scr...
And repost my comment from one of those times:
>> The value provided by a physical map of a book is knowing how far along you are in the book, yet that's also available in a visual form in an ebook as well. You can even riffle through pages on most e-readers as well, seeing a preview of the page as you move quickly forward or backwards.
>> Aside from weight, what value is the physical map really providing?
> No, it provides more.
> Actually your brain maps physical properties of the book to actual content, creating an overlay map over the story or the content (and our brain is really good at mentally mapping things). This is that map that is being used to know where in the book a particular piece of information is.
> Reading on e-reader is more linear than reading a paper book. See: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-scr... https://insights.uksg.org/articles/10.1629/uksg.236/ and https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/19/readers-absorb...
> Besides, no e-reader today can let your riffle through pages as fast as paper book.
> When you are in a novel, or in a manual, you have some kinetic and touch feedback to build memories of where's what. The book becomes an extension (à la proprioception) with much less friction than an e-read for which you have to wait for visual feedback (screen refreshing).
> With paper books things are at the tip of your fingers.
> E-reader have more friction.
> That's a reason why I only read novels on e-reader and jot notes in a notepad for non-fiction books.
> If I had the budget I'd only have physical books.