The Value of a Book
By: Alex Payne
It's interesting how an abundance of anything can make a population take it for granted. In this society, we take clean water, abundant food, and so many other things for granted because they have always been readily available to us throughout our lives. Books can be something that falls into this category as well. We've seen hundreds of books throughout our lives, and we each have owned quite a few ourselves. Books don't have much value to us (except to college kids who have to pay ridiculous prices for textbooks). A paperback book can cost a few dollars at Half Price ooks, and it's not hard at all to find the book you are looking for if you look online or go to a library. It's so amazing to think that there was a time that owning a collection of books made you a person of high class and wealth.
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How we view books today
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I had known before that making books hundreds of years ago was a long and expensive process, but it just hit me in class that each individual book was like its own individual being with its own fingerprint. Before the printing press, each book was handwritten by scribes who painstakingly wrote out each individual book. If they messed up, they gave that specific book a characteristic that no other book like it would have. The long process of making the book and all the money that went into making it made it a thing of wealth to own. This is evident when you see that some books are even gilded (as mentioned by Madeline). No one would put gold on anything that was not of extreme worth. I was so interested by the 24 carat gold that graced some of the pages of the books we saw in class. Some of it had lost its luster and was fading away, but the gold pieces that still shone were absolutely beautiful. I doubt there is any book made nowadays (besides maybe a very important religious book) that would have so much worth in it.
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Gold gilded page
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Books do not have the same value they used to have in the past. With the increase in online sources, books are becoming outdated. With the invention of the Kindle and Nook, people are looking more to reading material online instead of having paper in their hands. For some reason I've always preferred the old fashioned way of reading, but seeing the video of how each individual piece of paper in a book was made and the hard work that so many people put into books production has has made me want to stick to the old fashioned way even more. I know that books published now will never have the same value that books in the past had, but I just hope that we will continue to have books being published in the future.
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| Kindle and Nook |
Alex,
ReplyDeleteWhen I first read your blog, I absolutely agreed. All of the advancements in technology have taken the culture surrounding books to an entirely new place. From the publisher’s perspective, printing books has become increasingly easier and less expensive. Likewise, technology has expedited the process for the readers as well. Since books can be instantly purchased and delivered on tablets and Kindles, there’s less of a need to browse a bookstore or a library. The whole process is so fast and easy, that appreciation for everything that goes into making a book often gets left behind.
But when I started to write this comment, my opinion started to change. In his post about parchment, Todd mentioned the Harry Potter series, which has become a sentimental subject in the minds of many from our generation. How many of us stood in line all night for the midnight releases of these books? I know I did. And as soon as that book hit my hands, I cracked it open and started reading. I didn’t wait until I got home-- I didn’t even wait to pay for it-- before I started reading.
As much as I would like to think everyone is a die-hard Harry Potter fan, I know my enthusiasm for these books is not exactly a cultural norm. However, try mentioning Twilight in a conversation without getting a groan, happy squeals, or a bombardment of opinions anywhere in between. The same could be said for books like Fifty Shades of Grey or A Million Little Pieces, or hundreds of other books.
In all honesty, I still agree with just about everything you wrote in your blog, which leaves me in a slightly awkward position. I think that while an appreciation for books themselves, as a medium, has definitely decreased, I think the stories, the content of these books, remain ever ingrained in our culture.
E-books terrify me! I feel like I need to have my hands-on the book to fully focus. There is just something magical about reading an actual book. I wonder what the future of books is. Will libraries become places that the generations to come never visit? Will online text replace many forms of today's paper text? There are so many factors to consider! I wish to believe that the beauty of books will stand the test of time and be a blessing to the future as they are for us.
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