Physical Books vs. E-Books

HOW MANY BOOKS IS TOO MANY BOOKS?

PART I - A LITTLE BACKGROUND

Please feel free to skip to Part II if you just want to read about physical vs. e-books.

I've always had a love affair with books and I grew up surrounded by them. I don't know how true this is, but my mother claims she'd put me in my crib before I could even walk and say, "Read a book!" and I'd bury my head in one without knowing what it was. This continued throughout my childhood. Whenever I was bored or whining or in the way--"Read a book!"

When I finally learned how to read, there was no stopping me. Comic books were my favorite and my ultimate favorite comics were Superman (whether in Superman, Action Comics, Superboy, or Adventure Comics) and Batman. Occasionally, The Flash or Thor or The Hulk would show up, but I was a DC comic kid all the way. 

Every other Friday, my great uncle (we all called him "Unk") would pick me up at school to spend the weekend with he and my Aunt Dorothy ("Aunt Dort") and go with Unk to get a haircut. Right next to the barbershop was a drugstore and that meant with every haircut, I'd score at least one new comic and possibly two. I still remember standing there at the rack trying to decide and finally just putting that pleading look on my face ... "Can I get two, Unk? Please? I can't make up my mind." Unk never said no. In "my room" at Aunt Dort and Unk's house, I had a special drawer in the dresser that was packed with my collection. I never took them home with me--the two chimps my parents had after they had me might get their hands on them and tear, stain, or otherwise ruin them. So no--those comics stayed right there with Aunt Dort and Unk.

When I discovered Classics Illustrated, I got another drawer in the dresser and the choice became much clearer. One superhero comic and one Classics Illustrated. 

To this day, I can tell you the plot of classic novels I've never even read and I owe that all to Classics Illustrated.

Sadly, I only have two of the original collection in my possession now, sixty years later: Classics Illustrated Frankenstein and a Superman Special Edition--Tales of the Bizarro World.

I keep these in plastic in the safe. They're fragile...

But enough of this sentimental glimpse into the past... I want to talk about books.

Sometime around the 7th or 8th grade, I started reading actual novels--and keeping them. I was a kid, so a novel would last me 4 or 5 months, but I kept at it. The last thing I'd hear every night from either my mother or father would be "Turn off the flashlight and go to sleep!" This continued through high school where I discovered Book Clubs--the ones that would send you a dozen books up front if you promised to buy 4 a year. I also discovered that if you punched a few extra holes in the computerized bill "card" they sent you and sent it back without a payment, you'd never hear from them again. 

I never claimed to be an angel and at 16 years old, I didn't know a thing about author's rights or royalties or anything else. I just liked free books. Yes--I was a thief. A book thief. And I figured it was quite alright because that made me a "high brow" thief and not a common criminal boosting hubcaps or shoplifting records. I was more "The Pink Panther" type of crook leaving a white glove after I'd stolen the jewels.

To my credit (well, actually, a crook is a crook but I didn't know any better), once I got a job I started buying books and joining book clubs where I'd actually fulfill the agreement and buy the required number of books in order to get the free ones. But book clubs have changed a lot--and I didn't know that until I just went and looked. Doubleday Book Club, my absolute favorite in the 70's, now gives you "Two books for $9.99 each if you join today" and you can cancel at any time. When I was a member, you'd get TEN books for free if you promised to buy 4 at regular price throughout the year. They'd send you a catalog each month and it would list their choice of the month. You could either return the card refusing their choice and select your own choice, return the card refusing their choice and choosing not to buy a book that month, or do nothing and their choice would be automatically shipped to you. I would join, get my 10 free books, buy 4 in the next 4 months which would fulfill my membership requirement, then immediately cancel the membership and re-enroll to get 10 free books again.

The first thing I did when I rented my first apartment after college was build a bookcase to hold my library. At the time, I had around 100 volumes and I'd read maybe a third of them--but I intended to get to the rest, so it was okay. My bookcase was built to house 200 books easily and I added to the library as time and money permitted.

My first house had built-in bookcases, but I brought my self-built bookcase with me when I moved in. The built-in bookcases in the family room were filled with what I considered to be "classics" while my self-built bookcase (in my "study") held the ones I liked. The family rooms books were there to show visitors how well-read I was and to impress girls--to let them know they were in the presence of a "man of letters" or, what I'd call now, a "pretentious asshole."

From that house, I moved to the cabin where I'd remain for almost 26 years. The cabin had three rooms; a living room with a little corner kitchen, a back bedroom, and the upstairs--which was one big room. The self-built bookcase came with me and I put it in the living room, but I was left with boxes of books remaining and nowhere to put them. A log cabin, however, is the perfect place for throwing up home-made bookcases which is precisely what I did. The back bedroom became my office and with a truck full of pine 1" X 8" boards, an electric drill, a saw, and a few boxes of drywall screws, the back bedroom was lined with bookcases in no time. And I made sure to feature these bookcases in the author photos for my first two books.

Notice the 5.25" floppy disk organizer to the right--I was cutting edge.

Lesson 1 - Cultivating the Serious Writer image.

Eventually, I realized that if was going to stay in my beloved cabin and have the occasional house guest and family visit, I was going to have to do better than have them sleep on the couch, so I moved my office upstairs, tore out the bookcases, and turned the back room into what it was supposed to be--a bedroom.

But what about the books? They'd gotten out of control by this time. The bookcase in the living room was over-flowing. The bookcases in my office were stuffed. There were books on the floor, books where normal people would store things like dishes... My little 200 volume library had grown to almost 900 books.

Then it hit me. The upstairs of the cabin was open-beam construction. The walls upstairs were actually nothing more than the framework of the roof. Big, hefty 4" X 6" pieces of pine every two feet. What if I just nailed pieces of wood down the beams and then sat a shelf on top of those? I could have two sets of bookshelves, one on each side of the office, both with six shelves and both 18 feet long! Off to Lowe's again.

Yes, Elly Mae, I got me a shitload of book-learnin'.

Problem solved. Enough bookshelves to hold me for the rest of my life. This picture is 25% of the actual space--the shelves you can't see further down were sparsely populated and the identical shelves on the other side of the office were almost bare.  

Life, however, goes on. I met the love of my life. She was not a cabin fan...

And in her defense, the cabin wasn't built for a proper lady--it was built for a hard-living, unsophisticated wild man with an affinity for cheap wine, expensive whiskey, playing in rock and roll bands, and writing whatever any publisher would buy. She lasted 10 months there before announcing that either one or both of us were moving.

We put the cabin on the market, sold it the next day, bought a new house in Nashville three days later, and left most of the furniture (including my beloved self-built bookcase) for the new owner because, I was informed, "we are through with rustic."

But what about all the books?

I went through the library which, by this time, was 1,743 volumes and separated the crème de la crème--the ones I couldn't do without. Then I did it again. Then I did it again. Six times, I did it, whittling down my life's collection each time. I finally settled on keeping 320 volumes which I boxed up for the movers. The rest went into the back of my pickup truck covered with a tarp and I went about the process of trying to find a home for them. Remember--I wanted to keep them--but even though the new house was three times bigger than the cabin, it was a "proper home." I couldn't line every room with bookshelves made out of unfinished, rough-sawn 1" X 8" pine.

The local libraries didn't want my books. Too much work to sort through them, I guess. Easier for them to spend taxpayer money on new books. Local bookstores didn't want them--and there weren't any used bookstores around at this time. I parked the truck near the entrance to a shopping mall with a sign - FREE BOOKS - and left it there for an entire weekend. That put a fair dent in the quantity, but I still had several hundred to go, so I put the tarp back over the books and drove to the new house intent on going back to the mall the next day. That night, despite a weather forecast of "Clear with a low of 65," a thunderstorm came out of nowhere, blew the tarp off the truck bed, and ruined what was left of the library. 

I was heartsick. Sure, I was getting rid of them, but I wanted them to be read, not destroyed. To see them ruined was a horrible feeling. I went to the county dump and tossed them out. It took me almost two hours to throw them into the receptacle because I picked up each one and leafed through the soggy pages before chucking it in the bin. I felt like I'd abused my children. 

PART II - COLLECTING VS. USING

I'm a "collector" by nature and a "cataloger" by habit. There's a Microsoft Access database on my computer that'll tell you the name, year of release, stars, director, genre, and location of each of the 4,703 films in my collection. It'll also tell you if I have the movie on DVD/Bluray or in digital format and, if digital, on which external hard disk drive the film is located. I like "collector" much better than "obsessive-compulsive" but I guess either one would fit. Only (only?) 972 of these films are on discs because there's no room in the closet for anymore discs. 

You can walk into my office and you'd never know I was a serious film collector--all those movies are either on one of the shelves in the closet or on an external hard drive. But a year ago I started going through the discs alphabetically (of course) and getting rid of the ones I know I'll never watch again. It was becoming way too much like hoarding to suit me.

Owning the DVD of that M. Night Shyamalan piece of shit "Lady in the Water" was like keeping a leisure suit on the clothes rack.  

As much as any book lover hates to hear it, this same thing applies to books. If you're not going to read it again, it's in the way. Having it on the shelf might impress somebody who can barely read a traffic sign, but other than that, you don't need it. And if you're a book collector--if you keep every single book you've ever owned--I can almost guarantee you you're either a slob or you've got more room in your house than you need. If I walk into somebody's house and there are books stacked in corners that haven't been touched or books piled on desks that haven't been moved in a year or all the bookcases are stuffed to overflowing and I hear, "I just love books!" the first thing I want to ask is "How about silverfish? You love them too?"

PART III - MY POINT, I'M GETTING THERE

I know, it took me long enough...

When Kindles were first introduced, I was ecstatic. From what I could tell, I could now actually load up 100 books on this little device about the size of ONE book and take it with me wherever I went. I had to have one. Would you like to know how badly I had to have one? Check out the price on my original Kindle:

Complete this sentence: A fool and his money are soon _____.

After I got this Kindle, we went on vacation for 2 weeks. I read 6 books during that time ALL ON THIS DEVICE. I didn't have to lug 6 books with me, didn't have to interrupt pool time for bookstore time, didn't have to leave the books in the hotel when I was finished with them, and didn't have to lug 6 books back home with me. Sim saw me reading on this thing and she had to have one, too.

$800 worth of Kindles and these weren't even touch-screen. You had to click a button that said "Next Page" to turn the page. I mention this because I still can't believe we spent that much money on two e-readers when you can buy them now for next to nothing. I have some stock in Amazon but it'll never increase in value enough to allow me to forgive them for charging $388.99 for a Kindle. Sure, I bought it, so it's actually my own fault, but I refuse to accept the blame.

Anyway, once we got Kindles I began replacing the beloved books I'd gotten rid of with ebooks. At that time, you could buy the Kindle version of a new release for a couple of bucks vs. the hardcover for $25, but you could also buy fairly recent books and modern classics for $0.99--Vonnegut, King, McCourt, Koontz, etc. Their physical books were still regular price, but their ebooks were cheap. Older classics, those out of copyright, were free! Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Henry James--download them all for nothing.

Of course, that was then, this is now: Now you can buy a Kindle for $30, but you're going to pay damn near the same for a Kindle e-book as you are for the hardcover. Stephen King's latest book The Outsider is $2.10 cheaper for the Kindle than it is in hardcover. Not what I'd call a bargain, but I still bought the Kindle version because of the whole space restraint thing. 

In addition, now, you sometimes run across a book where the Kindle version is more expensive than the physical book. I'd love to hear the explanation for that.

Complete this sentence: There's a __________ born every minute.

But ten years ago, in 2009, I was sold on e-books. I could still collect books, still read like Henry Bemis in that wonderful Twilight Zone episode "Time Enough At Last," still have all my favorites at my fingertips--and not have the house look like Joe Shit the Rag Man lived here.

PART IV - FINALLY

Are you a book lover or a literature lover? Do you love books for their appearance, feel, and smell or do you love books for the words contained in them? Most likely, it's a bit of both but more of the latter.

I was talking to a friend the other day - a book reviewer/blogger - and I mentioned I'd received an ARC (Advanced Readers Copy) of a novel to evaluate via email. She said she'd received the same book in the mail, but "I got the real book." 

I replied, "Yeah, I got the real book, too." And her answer was, "No, you didn't. You got an e-book. I got a real book."

I like physical books because some of them are cool-looking, but I've still got some ugly-ass books in the slimmed-down version of my physical book collection. There's not an uglier book in the world than my edition of Walden and I've got a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking that smells like ass, so don't ever let me bullshit you by saying, "I just love the feel, look, and smell of real books."

I'm getting "more mature" every year which means very few people think I know what I'm talking about anymore, but I do know that we spend the first 55 years of our lives trying to accumulate stuff and the remainder of our lives trying to get rid of it. Getting rid of physical books and replacing them with e-books actually simplified my life. For one thing, it's less to clean. Much as I love seeing books on a shelf, I hate a dusty, neglected bookcase. Much as I love books, clutter drives me insane. And if I see a bookcase that's got volumes sideways, upside down, and backwards with books jammed in horizontally on top of books shelved vertically as if they were driven in there with a sledgehammer, I don't think, "Wow...this person is so well-read..." I think "Somebody ought to tell this person this ain't a dorm room."

I prefer e-books to physical books because:

1. They're more convenient.
2. They take up no space.
3. I can read in bed and Sim can still sleep.

That's it. Those are my only reasons. 

Yes, I'll be sorry if North Korea drops an electromagnetic pulse bomb on us and all our electronic equipment goes tits up but if that happens, I'll probably have more to worry about than slogging through Ulysses.

For all my posturing about physical books and appearances, I admit that I have each of the Modern Library's Top 100 Novels downstairs in a bookcase in the living room. I tell myself I keep them there so I'll know where to find them--they're not mixed in with the books in my office--but part of me knows they're there to announce to other readers who visit, "Look--this guy's a reader, too!" And the physical books I have in my office? My favorites--books I read again and again. Why don't I have them in e-book versions? I do. Then why do I keep the hard copies? Because I'm full of shit. These books aren't just words. Each one tells a story that's not printed inside it. Each ones reminds me of where I was when I got it and what I was doing when I first read it. Some of them have inscriptions I wrote inside. Some are autographed by writers who became friends later on. Some are autographed by writers who turned out to be flaming assholes. Some of them have notes I scribbled in the margin or paragraphs I highlighted. Some of them even have the 8th deadly sin--the folded over page, folded over for a reason.

One of the first poems I published 40 years ago had these lines:

"...so I dropped the pink flower

that I had picked

 from the flowering peach

into a book of Keats

and left it for another day..."

Old Keats is still on the second shelf of one of the bookcases in my office. And on page 126, there's a pressed pink flower.