You shouldn't, I know. But how, then, should one decide which book to pick? I don't want Amazon's algorithm to do that job. Books are beautiful, and this is why:
- They are decorative: Book covers can be a work of art.
Like the front page of a magazine or a newspaper, the cover of a book
should whet the appetite to read it. When I recently bought the first
book out of a series of of F. Scott Fitzgerald's most notable works
designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith
to mark the 70th anniversary of the author's death, two of my friends
couldn't keep themselves from informing me that this
short story collection can be downloaded for free. Yeah, I know. But I
had to own this one, like I want to own the other five. I will put them all in a row on my bookshelf and then I will take a shelfie. Speaking of shelves, can you imagine a home without books? Those 13 examples make me want to move into a bigger apartment immediately.
- They are personal: If you own a book, it's literally yours. Like footprints in the sand, you leave
your marks in there as well: Dog-eared, Spilled coffee, greasy spots of sunscreen,
maybe even stains of tears... And if you like to highlight serveral sentences, like I do, they also remind you of what used to be important to you while you read that book. Maybe this will have changed when you re-read it, maybe there are some sentences which always hold true for you.
- They are a treasure:
You can download a book and save it to your
kindle. But apart from missing out on the decorative part there is
nothing special about having downloaded a book like thousands of other
people did. Like wine, books get better the older they are, especially
when they are rare - which turns them into real treasures. In addition,
they most often have some personal worth like this collection of
Shakespeare's works I inherited from my Great Grandfather. It is the
first German translation by Schlegel and Tieck who translated
Shakespeare in the spirit of German Romanticism. Those books are dated "1825" and there are probably the most precious pieces of
paper I own.
- They smell: Yes, they smell very good. The older they get, the more they evaporate that scent of: "I have stories to tell".
- They give you a feeling of achievement and progress: I feel lost in a kindle book. Seriously. This tiny number on the bottom of the page which tells me the percentage of how much of the total I've already read actually tells me nothing. Those are just figures. A bookmark shows your where you are, you see how close your are to the end and - if it's a really good book - where to start slowing down in order to be able to enjoy the story for a bit longer.
