I was often fazed by the plethora of books and collections of school materials certain people often had when I was in university. I would visit them in their houses or hostels to find stacks of books and documents related to school and their courses of study. They would be so many at times that it sometimes made me feel like I was the opposite of a student. My space was void of such things and sometimes looked like a studio with my guitar and things of that sort all around.
Many of those kinds of people were doing well academically, and so it felt like they were super hardworking and more invested in their education than I was—because I was different. The catch, however, was that I was doing pretty well for myself as well. The actual difference was that I dreaded clunkiness and focused more on being efficient.
I often seek easier ways to go about my everyday life. Life can be much simpler with the innovations we have in the world today, so why not? E-books were my way of life; they worked just fine for me, and so I stuck with them and had much more space in my environment without having books all around.
I am not that much of a book lover, however. I only read pretty much in school because of the grades. Now that all that is over—or paused for now—I have picked up newer interests. One of those interests is developing myself generally.
Developing myself would be in the sense of being better with my interpersonal relationships, understanding how to align my life and career with my passions and values, and things of that sort. And in one of those times of meditation, I was reminded that books hold information through time—they always have—and chose to read books from then. Clearly, they were going to be mostly self-help books, and I would consider stories much later as they weren't a priority at that time.
Again, e-books can do the trick, but then I realised something about them: they live in a digital world, and the only way to access them is through some digital device. My phone, PC, or whatever isn't the same as a real book. Actual books seem to "give more life" to reading. And, also, it's pretty easy to get distracted by the myriad of things that the gadget can do.
I knew that one way to effectively go about reading books more was to have them physically. "Out of sight, out of mind," as I had learned in Atomic Habits by James Clear, taught me that having a book I really want to read sitting out in the open—on a table or bed—increases the probability of picking it up and actually reading it. And so, guess what?
I started buying "physical" books...
Here's an unboxing of one of my books. Please, click on "Source" to see it.
It has been quite a journey so far with reading actual books. I get to sit close to my window, maybe with a cup of coffee (or just water), and just peruse the pages and have their content glide through my mind as I consume them.
Have you ever smelled e-books before? You know how the fresh smell of an e-book can feel, or the vintage aroma of an old book; how soothing they are when one runs their fingers through the pages, or even the sound of the pages as they are flipped. Of course not! Only physical books can actually bear those descriptions. And it is why I'd rather read physical books now instead.
A constraint to actually indulging in the aura of reading physical books, however, is that they are way less accessible when compared to e-books. I would still read e-books, though, especially when I begin furthering my education. I just wouldn't go buy Mechanics of Machines by R.S. Khurmi which probably costs a lot, just to read a couple of pages.
So, dear reader, what I have been trying to say in essence is that I value reading physical books over e-books in defiance of my minimalist approach to living "free," but acknowledge the circumstances in which e-books could be apt. Thank you for reading!
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