Books Are Weird

Screnzy update: At 50,000 words, definitely going to run out of month. Super-Screnzy, go!



So I borrowed a collection of essays from my English teacher yesterday, and I read an amazing essay, Never Do That To A Book. If you don't trust my links, as some may not, then just know it's on the treatment of books. Fadiman, the author, identifies two kind of book lovers- the courtly lovers and the carnal lovers. Courtly lovers are more like book collectors, who consider the book itself, the physical object, to be sacrosanct. Carnal lovers are about the content, and feel free to abuse the physical book however. Case in point: courtly lovers will use bookmarks, and very carefully at that, while carnal lovers will crack the spine, dog-ear a page, write comments in the margins, etc. Both Fadiman and myself are firmly in the carnal category.

But the essay got me thinking. What exactly matters when we're talking about something like books? Is it what's contained in the pages, or is it the pages themselves? People who like e-readers are obviously more interested in the information than the feel of having a book in their hands. Which category of bibliophile would they fall into? Are they courtly lovers, who like the e-book format because they never need worry about damaging the holy vessel of knowledge?? Or are they carnal lovers, who don't care about the vessel, simply caring for the information contained within?

Personally, I prefer books. My room is full of them - they fill my bookcase and have overflowed onto the floor. I like searching through my stack of reference books for a bit of obscure knowledge. If I have a book on a subject, I prefer to search through it before I go to the internet. I like having the physical objects, to use and abuse as I wish.

I don't really remember what the point of this was. I'm mostly just saying that books are a weird concept, I guess. Are they the mass of paper and ink, or are they the 75,000 to 100,000 words that make up the typical novel?

If anyone actually reads this, which do you like better? Paper copies or electronic?