Looks like I last did a review/summary myself in 2011. I think I just got bored of doing these even when they are inline with my projects. I don’t have the requisite community service mentality.
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Yeah definitely feel like an asshole posting this thread especially since I drafted off the benefits of writing about books back when there were far fewer people doing it and they had way more cachet than they do today.
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In 2009 nobody ever said of a book, “this should be a thread at best”. Even the fluffiest faddish business book was given benefit of doubt of having a decent essay’s worth of content to it. Books meant something beyond just being an intellectual calling card for “thought leaders”
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I think the book as a mainstream medium is possibly dead. Now new books are of the following types:
1. Personal brand calling card
2. Scholarly specialist things
3. B2B middleware for movies/TV, incidentally also read by nerds
4. Reactionary memberberries for waldenponders
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Yep books as decor, though that’s always been the case to a degree
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Replying to @vgr
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I think all the paper-book supremacists gloating at the plateauing of ebooks are misreading what’s happened. It’s not that p-books are fighting back, it’s that blogs etc are undermining both now. The p-book resurgence is a transient domestic cozy reactionary thing. Doomed.
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Replying to
I don't think this is quite true 😆
Ebook plateau partly due to weird econ stuff but also paper books = aesthetically preferable *and* resilient tech superior to ebooks in many ways
(I'm no pbook supremacist, read lots on kindle too & all for new book forms/tech!)
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I think the simpler explanation is publisher resistance to amazon's pricing dominance in ebooks. The aesthetic preference fits into my case 4 (waldenponding memberberries).
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Yeah and related to that pricing weirdness, often cheaper to buy (used books at least!)
Re: aesthetics, I'm thinking more about where it overlaps w/ actual utility. Books just feel good to hold, better to gift, etc. I think fairly pervasive even if unconscious
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yeah that's the main reason I've bought paper books recently: price. In rare cases (a couple of graphic novels) for aesthetics. Mostly I assume we're in a future of indefinitely improving general access and most stuff will go public domain and I won't even need to own them
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I'm reminded of how, during VCR era, people religiously taped their favorite shows and some even created libraries of entire series. Now we just assume it'll be on Netflix or Hulu or something, and if it goes offline, that it'll come back somewhere else soon enough.


