Nerve Endings Firing Away

Not necessarily. Unless of course you believe a book is only about its printed content, and nothing else. And that the book is only about its utility that does not extend beyond after you’ve read it.

Content will matter in ways a medium cannot match, and the medium (here a paper book) will matter in ways that mere published content cannot match.

If we move beyond mere content then there’s much going for the paper book, much, much going.

And, no, I’m not merely speaking of my copy of “The Age Of Kali” autographed by William Dalrymple, or those copies autographed by Ruskin Bond, both of which, to this day, even after years down the road, remind me of each moment of those encounters. It’s another story that if not for paper books those meetings might never have happened, or if they did there’d be no ribbon cutting for sure, least of all no autograph signings, so possibly fewer people travelling responding over :-)

And no, I’m not just speaking of the books my friends inscribed before gifting me, those books survive on my shelf today, some of the friends passed away young. Those inscriptions keep them alive for, the books they gifted had helped shape their own lives once, reminding of shared dreams and aspirations, of personnas the books represented, and ideals the content espoused.

There’s much, much more. Like with anything, value is what one is prepared to take away from what is valued. And it is possibly more true of paper books than most others.