In Defense of Books

“What does it mean when what you own is essential to who you are? In our everyday grasp of owning things, we tag it materialism, consumerism, consumption. But I trust you’ll agree that the possession of books is not identical to the possession of shoes: Someone with a thousand books is someone you want to talk to; someone with a thousand shoes is someone you suspect of belonging to the Kardashian clan. Books are not objects in the same way that shoes are objects. This is what Milton means in his sublime ‘Areopagitica,’ as necessary now as it was in 1644, when he asserted that ‘books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.’ Potency of life, purest efficacy, living intellect: These are the world-enhancing elements you have in any well-made book worth reading.”

– William Giraldi, “A Bibliophile’s Defense of Physical Books”