Ask PG: Do you still own books?

Anyone else feel free to comment, especially if you were a paper book lover but switched.

I mow my lawn with a manual push mower, I don't own a smartphone and I still prefer paper books. Our society is moving towards a constantly-connected life, but I'll go out on a limb and say it's good for the soul to get away from electronics completely every so often. That's why I'll (probably) never give up paper books.

I've tried to switch completely to e-books but when the content get technical, I still find paper books a lot easier to read (probably since you can go back and forth easier than with e-books).

The problem is that I like to read a lot. Usually a book per week, so I keep almost everything in eBook form.

As a consequence, my personal approach is to only keep up to 5 physical books at any given time. Basically I buy the book in eBook form and if I like it a lot - like really, really love it, I can order a physical copy. At that point, I should have already made the decision of which one of my 5 physical books is going to get donated to make space for this one.

I hate clutter and my best work is done in focused and clean environments, so that's why I do this.

I've made little headway into ebooks, for a number of reasons: a lot of the books I want to read are not available in electronic form; a lot of the books I want to read I already own paper copies of, and I feel little incentive to buy them again; I find that I usually prefer reading in paper form rather than electronic form, especially for anything longer than a couple of pages or so.

That said, I have recently read several novels on my phone, and found that to be a surprisingly pleasant and effective way to read fiction.

Alas, the recent disclosures have fanned the flames of personal privacy and free software idealism in my thinking, reducing what little fondness I had grown for ebooks.

Not really. Traveling for the last few months my kindle has been a godsend. No desire now that I'm back to get the physical alternative.

One problem with programming books is that code listings are not well formatted. Paging through a code listing on paper is not ideal. But it is usually even less ideal paging through a listing in an e-book format.

E-books should be better than print. They should have at least scrolling code, syntax coloring, and and updates straight out of repos.

I have donated 90% of my shelves to the library replacing them with digital versions. The only books I'm keeping are first editions, rarities, art or photography books. I like the notion of paper books, had 5 large bookshelves full, but I hate moving with them and the Kindle/iPad setup is really quite nice.

I gave all my books to Goodwill last year -- a lifetime of collected & curated sci-fi & fantasy paperbacks, plus some antique tech titles (the "Be Book" was in the pile) and went digital.

I have maybe 20-25 books now. Nearly all of them are technical titles, because the typical reader device isn't large enough to display their diagrams/charts (Amazon doesn't sell the 10" Kindle any more, and iPad-like devices don't have the battery life for a reader)

I do miss the possibility of re-reading the titles that never made it to digital (muddy copyright ownership, lack of interest on the part of the publisher), but I'm happy that perhaps someone browsing through Goodwill might pick it up and enjoy it too.

I used to be a lover of Fantasy Paperbacks ... but had to get rid of most of them when my husband and I sold everything to move to SV. Since then I now keep 90% of my books digital, which I fought against at the time, but appreciate it now! My husband had an even harder time with clearing out RPG hardcovers.

Between us I think we kept about a dozen books; autographed copies of things or gems that we can't get in digital, but that's it.

Programming books we long since switched to digital - those giant tomes were not only a huge waste of space but went out of date way too soon. Yay for O'Reilly.

I buy most of my books from thrift stores, the major advantage of this is that I can spend less money, get things that may never be published electronically or that I didn't know I wanted, and don't have to make any record anywhere of what books I own. (On the receipt the purchases are charged in generic categories as opposed to specific titles. Even if I were paying with a credit card you wouldn't know what I have.)

With that in mind the library of books I would even want to buy electronically is limited. A further limitation of e-books is that they often come with DRM. E-books that I've seen are sequential access, paper books are random access. Search helps bridge the gap here. (Paper books will never have search, and it's arguably a more useful feature than random access. Especially if your E-reader software supports bookmarks.) The major advantage of an E-book is that it takes up basically no space. Considering the flexible media potential of electronic computers, that's sort of disappointing.

I own lots of books. I still buy books. I prefer to read books. e-readers have never won my heart.

If I were still in university I would maybe preferred those text books all be in digital form so I can carry less. However, that was long-ish ago.

still have all my old programming books and find it a lot easier to flip back to things.

30 yrs old; don't care for e-readers.

Avid physical book reader, particularly for anything professionally related. For me, there is no substitute for a physical book. They are extremely durable, inexpensive, reliable, allow me to write in them (e.g. corrections and ideas), highlight in different colors, can be set on a book holder next to me for reference while coding, be easily shared, be easily gifted, can have several open at once for reference, last longer than I have been alive, etc. There is a beauty in their simplicity and barebones functionality.

TL;DR Give me physical books or give me death.

For tech books, it's all Kindle for me. But reading for pleasure I still like the pulp. Some of my most favorite books I've ever read were found in some indie bookstore, antique store or garage sale. Hard to replace that.

Almost all of my books are on paper. I don't mind the space they're taking (six or so bookshelves throughout the house), and I'm past the stage of my life where I moved every other year, so there's no real incentive to get rid of them. They look good, are easy to take care of, and every so often I'll find myself with a few hours of free time and enjoy reading -- or rereading -- them. They are not clutter.

If my kids share my interests, they'll be happy I kept them (discovering my dad's stash of 1970s _Scientific American_ was a high point of my youth), and if not, they'll get rid of them when I'm gone. No worries.

Most of my books are non-fiction. I read a lot of fiction, but tend to use the library for that, except for a few authors I know I'll want to read more than once.

I've got nothing against ebooks (provided they have no DRM) but I guess I just don't need them.

I have been trying to get rid of 'physical stuff' also. I still buy about 10% of my technical books in paper form (usually an eBook pBook combo), but I really prefer having everything in eBook form. Many eBooks are provided in PDF, iPad, and Kindle formats. I make permanent backups of the PDF versions in case the publisher can not provide fresh copies in the future.

For fun reading the local library is a good source of pBooks (and movies on DVD, audio books, etc.)

My wife and I have been talking about living for months at a time in different areas of the world, for fun and eduction. That will require at least being able to live for several months at a time without a lot of stuff.

Math books are the hardest for me to read online,so I have hard copies.A pile of them.

I have a friend who has a lot of books and loves to loan them to people who are interested. I love going to his place because I usually bring back a few and we almost always end up talking about ideas in those books rather than discussing the latest material possessions we have acquired.