Hacker News Reader

I just returned from my mom's house. Visited her with my 4yo daughter. The house is full with old magazines and books, it's a time machine to my youth (and that of my parents). The magazines are full of drawings, annotations, etc, by me and my brothers... My daughter could connect with all that easily, we read together the same phisical comic book, she can see how her father and uncles draw on it just like her... Good luck having that on digital.

View on HN

On the other hand, I have paperback books I loved as a kid that were my father's when he was a kid. I carefully saved them for decades. One more generation and they could be considered family relics or something. I quickly realized the flaw with this plan as I tried to share them with my kids, who cannot be expected to treat brittle middle-grade and young-adult novels as museum pieces.

I am not entirely ready to part with the books, but I'm also unable to bear watching them get thoughtlessly destroyed by my kids. Digital has made it very easy to get copies of all of them; plus others I didn't manage to hold on to.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com