I find physical books comforting. Each one is a statement, somebody somewhere saying “I was here. I made this.” Books are human. By almost any measure they are less convenient, take up more room, and weigh more than digital versions. They require shelves. They collect dust and boring insects. It’s not difficult to take one or maybe two with me, but more than that becomes challenging. Because of my own personal relationship with books, I don’t write in them. If I find something I want to remember, I have to write it down on paper. So I need a pen and paper or a notebook whenever I read.
I do not own a dedicated ebook reader. I can’t imagine ever owning one. Not being able to turn a page would drive me mad. I do read articles on a tablet. And I annotate those articles. I find it incredibly convenient and easy. I can take hundreds of articles with me anywhere I go — my tablet never seems to weigh any more no matter how many articles I transfer to it. Sure, I never need more than a couple articles, but since I can take them, why not?
Books and ebooks make me think of cameras and photographs. I can take thousands of pictures on my digital camera. I can take copies of every one of those pictures with me on my phone. It never gets any heavier. But somehow not being able to flip through photographs leaves me unsatisfied. Pinching and scrolling might allow me to see details I wouldn’t see in a photograph, but I don’t know that my experience has improved. I don’t enjoy holding my phone for other people to squint at, and I don’t enjoy squinting at other people’s phones.
I will not likely examine every photograph I print, just as I probably won’t read carefully and remember every book on my shelves. But I like having those books there on my shelves, organized according to my own idiosyncratic system, ready to pull down when I want. I like having boxes of photographs, organized according to my own idiosyncratic system, ready to sort through whenever I want. When somebody asks, I can pull down a book and point out something, or I can pull out a photograph and show that person something.
I also enjoy the process of making photographs, just as I enjoy the process of making books. Everything I make could never progress beyond some digital artifact — I always use a digital camera, I could compose on a computer, I could assemble documents that combined text and images, I could make PDF or EPUB files. But that would be, for me, unfulfilling. Some days, I use a film camera, some days a digital. Some days I confine myself to a digital process. Some days I stick to analog. Most days, regardless of how I get there, I make books or partial books and fragments of books. I have boxes full of books and possible books. Rumor has it that making things with my hands is good for my brain, but that’s not why I do it. I do it because I find physical books comforting. I do it because it’s my way of saying “I am here. I made this.”