I buy all my music online, digitally. I see absolutely zero value in having a plastic disc in a jewel case shipped to me. YMMV, but that’s just how I roll. I’m sorry.
When it comes to books, though, I feel the complete opposite. Even though I don’t do it all that much, I really like reading. A good book will entertain you, a great book will inspire you, and a great book at just the right moment can completely, and in a good way, fuck up your internal wiring; and I firmly believe that this needs to happen on paper, not in a text file sitting on some random electronic device.
On a recent weekend trip to Munich, I bought Josh Bazell’s excellent “Beat the Reaper” (from 2009). I had not heard of it before, but I liked the cover, which is how I buy a lot of books (yup, the irony).
Two days later, on our return flight, a girl sitting next to me was reading her copy of the same book - she even was on the same page as I. A laugh and a quick chat were followed by the realization that this little piece of serendipity would have been lost if either of us had been reading on a Kindle.
I’m not a huge bookworm, but with everything else being connected and social now, I like books for being that little fragment of un-networked sanity. And I’m not yet ready to give that up.
