AIBU to like my obsolete books?

[Jezzifishie]

DH put some shelves up so all of our books are in one place - it completely fills one wall of the lounge. My friend came over and spotted the wall, he asked why we'd bothered as books are obsolete now. AIBU to feel sad about this? To me, it's not a home unless it has books!

I love books. I have 4 ikea bookshelves full and I’m always buying more.

I like a kindle for some fiction books and holidays. Non fiction must be in book format though and you can’t read in the bath with a kindle.

We have bookshelves in every room save the bathroom, and must have a few thousand books in total. We also have a Kindle which I use when I travel.

You can never have too many books!

I read novels on my kindle, partly because I have rubbish hands and can't physically hold a paperback open, but still have hundreds of cookbooks and reference books including diagrams that don't really work in kindle format and which are hard to dip into without a physical book in your hands.

I love my kindle but also love books. I have culled quite a few in recent years but still have hundreds who have earned their place on the book shelves. My children also have a lot -half a billy each. That’s the bare minimum I can get theirs down to without them noticing what’s missing!

My favourite ever present. My friend took a photo of this sign outside a pub and had it put into a snow globe. I'll never be parted from my books.

I’m not sure they will ever be obsolete. My 3 young adult dc all have kindles and plenty of technology but still buy and read proper books by preference.

Books are not obsolete! I love books, my DC love books too. I have a kindle as well which I adore but it happily lives along side my 'actual' books.

DappledThings I love it! That's awesome

I've got a kindle which is handy for travelling but I favour the experience of a real book. I feel lost with little sense of scale on the kindle, and I feel more in control with a book, I can flick back and check things more easily.

I still love listening to albums on CD too. I use the MP3 on my phone for playlists/ compilation type moods, but there is something about the experience of putting the CD in, it whirling around, and playing as the artist intended.

The only things that my children will have to deal with when I die is my massive horrendous book collection. Which I regularly whittle down. Yet still stands at 1000+.
Books are our making of us, surely?

Books are treasure. YANBU.

Oh, rubbish. It's totally ok to be bitextual , or even poly, since I fully embrace audiobooks too. I have just, finally, unpacked all our books after moving and redecorating - they take up an entire wall of the living room (about 25m shelving), likewise our room, and the kids have full-height shelves in their rooms too. All of us have Kindles too. Every physical book has a story behind it - my grandfather's Dickens collection; the series I bought with £21 of book tokens I was given on my 21st birthday; the shelves of picture books my teenager won't give away. The 1000+ books on my kindle are beloved in a different way, that's all (half for the potential, as my TBR is hideous). It is my most valued possession and goes everywhere with me.

Except work. But then, I am a librarian.

Online bookseller here. Luckily for me books aren’t obsolete, otherwise me and the DC would be eating out of skips.

Afteroving I whittled my books down to 4 large bookcases.I amreducing putting so classics onto kindle (complete works of Shakespeare,Dickens and Trollope atm)but leave those my dd get into on the shelves
I love real books and find them easier to pick up and read ages more pages if they are around whereas the kindle is more purposeful reading.
Also book tokens are still predominantly for paper books unless you want to buy from Amazon.

Reference books(1) come in handy, especially when info on the 'net can be altered or even vanish in seconds.

(1) Encyclopaedias/Maps/religious stuff et cetera.

I agree with you OP but with the younger and upcoming generations (actually I have no idea how old you are 😂) it’s all about minimalism and Smart everything.

Physical books are still popular with the younger generations, just check out BookTube - it’s growing daily!

Books are definitely not obsolete. I love them. I also have ebooks and audio books for travel and ease but I have physical copies of most (especially my audio books) so I can just sit and enjoy them. My DDs also have lots of books and keep asking for more.

I love books and would not swap them for a iPad or kindle.

I house 8000 or so books. It's about 150m of shelf space, both sides of the (ex-)master bedroom which is now our work-from-home office and library and more in the halls. I love books.

We also have three Kindles and lots of ebooks. They're perfect for travel, and novels in general, but obviously awful for comics/coffee table picture books/travel books or reference where you want to write on the pages or tag them/kids books/pop ups etc.

Ebook readers are an addition not a replacement, around here.

I sometimes go so far as buying hardbacks for the shelves (particularly of series where I had hardbacks before going electronic) and the ebook for actually reading, which I know is OTT but I also know the author gets a damn sight more kickback from either than if I bought the paperback. Overspending to help keep favourite authors writing is one of the things I do with my disposable cash, sometimes via Patreon as well.

@Silentcrow I love you for coining bitextual ! I don't go as far as poly, for some reason I'm incapable of following an audiobook plot. I get the individual sentences but it never gels in my head into a story. I dunno.

I pass on fiction books unless it's specific authors but keep non fiction. Your mate will be obselte before books are!! And 3 yr old DS already has a small bookshop sized collection 😂

SpoonBlender oh, I can't take credit for it, it's been going around booktwitter for a few years!

I tend to prefer non-fic for audio, it's like a podcast or radio programme then, and if the author reads it, so much the better. Fiction I can do if the narrator is particularly good - David Tennant reading The Wizards of Once is amazing.

Books rock. We have bookcases in 4 out of 9 rooms and one more than one wall in each room.

My dream is to have my own library.

Bitextual - Love it. Glad to see so many literary-fluid people around.