I was brought up with the concept of books being the secular equivalent of sacred. I still cringe at the idea of anyone ever throwing them away - and notes/underlines/doodles/dogears/etc still feel like unspeakable vandalism to me.
That’s not really a defensible attitude - books are just tools, physical books are just printouts of the text, terrible books don’t deserve space in my home, and there’s something unpleasantly religious about treating them as untouchable.
But the conditioning goes deep, and it’s hard to unwire.
I read ebooks 90% of the time now, rendering the question mostly moot - but my eyelid still twitches when I see someone hold a book folded back on itself.
Oh hell no.
I was brought up with the concept of books being the secular equivalent of sacred. I still cringe at the idea of anyone ever throwing them away - and notes/underlines/doodles/dogears/etc still feel like unspeakable vandalism to me.
That’s not really a defensible attitude - books are just tools, physical books are just printouts of the text, terrible books don’t deserve space in my home, and there’s something unpleasantly religious about treating them as untouchable.
But the conditioning goes deep, and it’s hard to unwire.
I read ebooks 90% of the time now, rendering the question mostly moot - but my eyelid still twitches when I see someone hold a book folded back on itself.