» Sunday, 19 July A.D. 2009
books that live forever
We read from God in the Dock last night:
If one has to choose between reading the new books and reading the old, one must choose the old: not because they are necessarily better but because they contain precisely those truths of which our own age is neglectful.
I wonder what happens in the long run when publishers figure out how to market E-books successfully. What if we end up with a Chris Anderson “Long Tail” scenario in books where whole libraries are available through Amazon and any book we want to read is a click away? We identify what is good partly through the process of time trimming away the excess and the dreck--in this case, books going out of print and so forth. (I think there is some value in digitizing books, but please do read Nicholson Baker's Double Fold to witness the rather ham-fisted ways in which libraries have gone about that process.) Will we be able to do so as easily as our options grow without bound?
posted by Nate @ 8:42PM