#020 -
The 12,000 ebook digital library
"It's cool that you have over 12,000 books in your digital library, but when are you going to read all that?"
"All of that? Never, obviously, but I like having them. I like to browse through the digital aisles, caress the digital spines of the books, grab one, open it, smell it (digitally), read a page or two, maybe a chapter, and put it back in the digital shelf. Every book or each series is a tiny universe, or a world of knowledge and I just like the idea of having thousands of universes within reach of a few clicks and all the knowledge and ideas I could ever read."
I recently spent a few days organizing a folder full of more than 24 GB of ebooks that I've been downloading for years and found out I have more than 12,000 books. That's a lot of books, for sure, more than I could ever read in many lifetimes. Many of them came from a few torrent archives that a friend shared with me, some I downloaded them one by one. There's a lot of fluff in there too: mass-produced best-sellers, romantic novels, fantasy novels that all look the same, about one thousand Star Wars Universe novels and comics, etc; there are a lot of intersting looking books that I'll probably never have the time to read; and there are many books that I really do want to read soon. There are also a bunch of books on my wish list that are not there, so I'll probably just keep adding more.
So what's the point of having all those files sitting in my hard drive if I am probably never going to read them? I don't know, I like having them, I'm into books, what's the point of having a 500 GB hard-drive if I'm not filling it with interesting things? Also, I like the idea that you don't necessarily have to finish every book you open; you can open a book, read a little, maybe it catches you, maybe it doesen't, it's time well spent. I think scrolling through a digital library is way better as entertainment than social media. Even the worst mass-produced "best seller" fluff novel is probably better written, better for your brain, than the endless barrage of content made for social media with the sole intent of pleasing the algorithms and engaging the user. Any writer who's written a novel probably spent months, if not years planning, writing, editing their book; even if I don't particularly like their style or their theme or their opinions, I can still respect the craft they put into it. The very act of reading is like workout for your brain, especially if you read something a little more complex and nuanced than a social media post just blurted out in one minute, or even a blog post, it requires much more processing than image or video; reading is artificial, it's intellectual, we did not evolve to read. Nowadays social media is mostly images and video for a reason: it's easy for your brain to process and engage with it. That's why I think I should watch less and read more.
I'm not totally against social media, though. I't fine to put your brain on stand-by for a little while every now and then, I do enjoy memes too. But we all know it can get addictive and we spend way too much time there.
DISCLAIMER: I'm not really endorsing piracy of ebooks, but... well, you know... wink wink.