Lately, I’ve been regressing, technologically speaking. There was once a time when I exclusively read ebooks, either on my Kindle or iPad. But nowadays, I’ve reverted completely to physical books again, and I much prefer them.
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There’s nothing quite like a good physical book, or is there?
6
I Don’t Need to Minimize My Library Anymore
The big reason that pushed me to get into ebooks was that I could carry an entire library’s worth of books on a single device. This was particularly useful to me at the time I made the leap because I was moving house every year throughout my degree and while looking for work immediately afterward. Packing up my books and hauling them from home to home got tiring fast, so I was eager to go digital.
Now that I’m older, though, I’ve settled into a home with my partner and I have no plans to move soon. Having a collection of physical books isn’t a burden anymore because I rarely need to move them and I’m not short of space to store them.
Ebooks served a useful function to me by taking up zero physical space, but now I don’t need that benefit.
5
Physical Books Are Delightful Objects
eReaders can certainly be elegant objects. They’re slim, lightweight, minimally designed, and the e-ink screens always feel a little magical to me. The best eReaders are nice devices, but a physical book still feels much more special.
With real books, you can feel the weight of a hefty tome or a light novella, you can revel in the artwork every time you pick it up, you can flick through the pages and feel the rough paper on your fingers, you can crack the spine and breathe in that “new book” smell. Your most cherished books will wear their dog-eared pages and weather-beaten covers like badges of honor.
There’s just something special about having a tangible book in your hands. I build a stronger bond with the story, and as a result it holds a bigger place in my memory. Ebooks lose that for me; I’m much more likely to forget I ever read something if I only ever owned it digitally.
Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (2024)
With a 7-inch display, high contrast, and sharp image quality, the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite will help you fall in love with eReaders. It even supports Bluetooth devices for setting aside the eReader and enjoying audiobooks through headphones or earbuds.
4
I Can Beg, Steal, and Borrow Real Books
There’s no shortage of free ebooks online, but most of the time you’re limited to reading the classics if you want to stick to free offerings (without turning to piracy). Sure, there are always lots of digital sales for ebooks, but I never seem to find the books I want on sale. Real books, on the other hand, are always easy to come by on the cheap if you’re willing to buy them used.
I’ve normally got more books waiting to be read than I could get through in a year, and I rarely pay full price for them. Friends and family are always lending or giving me books they think I’ll enjoy, charity shops are full of classic tales at bargain prices, and I often use book swap boxes in my community to drop off an old book I didn’t care for and try something new.
If there’s a particular book I know I want to read, I’ll just shop online for a used copy. It’s very easy to find second-hand physical books in good condition at low prices. You can’t do that with ebooks!
3
My Books Aren’t Split Across Multiple Stores
When I was into ebooks, I mostly read them on my iPad. This meant I could buy from the Kindle store or the Apple Book store, letting me snap up the lowest price for whatever book I wanted to read next. However, after a while, I started to find it very annoying that my library was split across both stores.
If I bought a book on the Kindle store it was locked to the Kindle app, and if I bought a book from Apple it was locked to Apple’s Books app. This meant I could never view my entire library in one place. I didn’t want to tie myself to a single store because the prices could vary significantly at times, but I found it very frustrating to split my collection, and it would have gotten even worse if I shopped at other digital stores as well.
With physical books, it doesn’t matter where I buy them. I can get books from Amazon, local book stores, charity shops, or anywhere else and they all end up on my bookshelf together. Having your books—or films or music for that matter—tied to certain platforms is only a problem for digital media, and escaping that is a big win for physical book lovers.
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2
I Can Curate the Perfect Bookshelf
With all my books in the same place—rather than split across multiple digital stores—I can now organize and present them on my bookshelf exactly how I want.
The Kindle library lets you sort books by title, author, or how recently you purchased them. But I like to sort my books chronologically within each author’s collection. On top of that, I also like to separate textbooks from novels. And I like to pull out my very favorite books to display on a shelf of their own.
If I wanted to, I could arrange my books by the color of their spines. It feels like chaos to me, but it’s what my partner does and I’ve got to admit it does look nice from a distance.
Even if digital book libraries gave you these unlimited sorting options, I’d still prefer physical books. And that’s because I can use my physical books as a display piece in the room, showing off what I’ve read and highlighting my favorites, even if I’m the only person who likes to see it. With ebooks, my collection was rarely, if ever, admired.
1
Physical Books Get Me Away From Screens
The biggest reason I’ve fallen back in love with physical books is that they get me away from a screen.
Between working on a computer, watching or playing games on a TV, and frequently checking my smartphone, I spend a terrifying amount of my life looking at digital screens. I’m not too concerned about my health—although I don’t believe screens are good for my eyes or my sleep—but I find it a depressing idea to think about.
A book lets me look at something real, tactile, and analog. But it also lets me focus on just the story, instead of getting drawn away by a notification or the pull of a social media app, which happens constantly when I’m reading on an electronic device.
eReaders overcome a lot of these problems—perhaps I’m to blame for reading on an iPad for so long—but it’s still nice to allow myself to switch off and get away from all my digital devices for a while. Reading a physical book is one of few activities in my life that don’t take place through a screen of some kind.
Of course, there are lots of benefits to reading ebooks still. My favorite eReader benefit is being able to tap a word to look up the definition. I’m embarrassed to say how many times the muscle memory for that has had me tapping words in a paper book to find a definition.
But when I look at my experience with reading as a whole, I’m happy to have made the leap from digital back to physical books, and I don’t see myself switching back any time soon.
