I had an English professor early on in college that gave an impassioned, albeit well rehearsed and repeated as his opening day starter for every course he taught, speech about books that always stuck with me. He urge us all not to sell our books back at the end of the semester. The college gives you a terrible price on the buy backs and who knows when you might find use for them later. Just one more way colleges screw you over, he said.
Bitter old English professors aside (or realist ahead of his time?), I have always loved used books. The more tattered the pages the better. Books that look like they had gone every where with someone. Passages underlined, notes in then margins, dog eared pages, evidence of another reader. I always felt books picked up extra meaning beyond the words on the page when you could see the wear on the spine and someone's words in the margins.
That is the mindset I that has always kept me from getting a Kindle. While I'm sure I'd love an ereader, I feel like it disconnects me from the book too much. There is a lack of permanence in the way the feel. A delicate nature that makes it hard to live in the words the same way as a physical book. Letting it pick up who you are as a reader as it travels with you. Those lived in books always felt handmade to me.
I've been thinking a lot about the DIY and crowd sourcing communities. The idea of building it yourself by hand instead of having someone glaze over your efforts with the gloss of expensive print jobs. At the same time letting the community that invests in choose help the projects develop into their full potential. In still piecing together my mission statement for a project I'm going to begin working on soon. If I can get a central idea to umbrella all my efforts under first, then I'll be able to really push myself into it and get it done. If I start trying without that idea solidified in my head fist I'll just waste my efforts trying to figure out step one for an unfinished idea. That wouldn't end up helping anyone.
