From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Thu Sep 14 2000 - 23:53:01 MDT
Spike Jones writes:
> You and all of us. I have over a thousand titles, most of em
> hardback. Ideally I would like to ASCII all the text without
> destroying the books, if possible. Let me know if you find
"without destroying the books"
If you succeed in this effort, would you still keep the books?
I like books. I like the feel of paper in my hand, and reading
from a printed page. I like bringing a volume on buses, trains,
to cafes. I like sitting on my couch with afghan around me with
my favorite music playing, a small reading light and maybe some
candles and a glass of wine.
My books reflect some decades of thinking and interests and
evolving and having them around me is like wearing a comfortable piece
of clothing. I don't feel at home, until my books are out of the
boxes and onto the shelves. If I design a virtual reality of my
home in the future, the virtual reality would have to have shelves
of my books. For my future version of myself, I would design
myself still liking books.
I don't like reading long texts electronically. I would be tickled
pink to have my books electronically available with which to search,
so I would like electronic versions too, although I would ideally
like to be able to search on equations too.
I'm finding that my small library, (average in comparison
to my Bay Area friends). is unusual among my colleagues here in Germany.
As my friends and colleagues helped me move a couple of weeks ago,
it's become a kind of inside joke in my group ('what is in these
boxes?' 'viele viele bucher ...!'), but I notice that at the
same time they want to spend hours browsing my books.
I have a sense that many here have similar small libraries; are
we so unusual to other people?
Eugene says:
>I have the same problem. I even stopped buying dead tree because I
>can't move with them in style
Please define "in style" ...
>And, yeah, lugging less stuff around does really free the mind.
Sure, you don't need to devote as much of your brain to keep track
of those titles. Yes, useful.
On the other hand, there's something irresistably gemuetlich about
having one's books around [and they are best replacement for T.V. (IMO)].
And living in a foreign country with no fluency in the foreign language,
the local libraries are frustratingly useless for me, so my library has
become my backup reseach support after the professional journals.
(Even my institute's professional library is weak, especially in comparison
to large U.S. university libraries. I really miss Stanford's bookstore and
libraries.)
Amara
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Amara Graps | Max-Planck-Institut fuer Kernphysik
Interplanetary Dust Group | Saupfercheckweg 1
+49-6221-516-543 | 69117 Heidelberg, GERMANY
Amara.Graps@mpi-hd.mpg.de * http://galileo.mpi-hd.mpg.de/~graps
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"Never fight an inanimate object." - P. J. O'Rourke
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