Twice now I've given many boxes of books to people planning to open used bookstores. The first one got about 30 boxes, the second only about 12. When I moved halfway across the country to my current location four years ago, I had at least twenty boxes of books. Just can't recall the exact number.
This last move, after a divorce, my criteria for keeping a book was, was it a book I'd want to reread, or was it a book not easily found at the library.
Since the move, and because of more reduced financial circumstances, about 90% or more of my reading is books from the library. Real books.
The biggest pleasure in returning to the library is re-discovering a very different mix of books from what I'd find in a bookstore. Plus, I can reserve and renew books on-line, and almost everything I want is available at the public library.
Oh. And when 8 track tape came out I thought it was a pretty dumb thing. Imagine, songs interrupted in the middle because of the idiotic formatting. Me, I never bought 8-track. I did buy cassette tapes for a reasonable period of time.
The genuine down side of digital storage is that over time it degrades, and over time the ability to replay is lost. I understand that the Library of Congress has all sorts of audio recordings that cannot be played, because no one has any clue just how they need to be played.
At least with real books, they can be read as is, and don't need any kind of special equipment to do so.
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