[masraum]

Originally Posted by foxpaws

I just read an interesting book - The Man Who Loved Books Too Much... and it talked about that - how the physical form of the book becomes part of our personal history - the feel of the pages, how it opens to a well loved passage, how the stains on the cover remind you of the summer at the beach when you read it, even the smell when you open it, takes us to a point in our personal history. That we become connected through our own timeline with the books on our shelves.

My wife and I are both avid readers. We have lots of books. The 2 weekends ago, we went through all of our books and picked out a bunch that we didn't need. We sold 15 boxes of books to Half Price Books because our bookshelves were all full. One thing that I noticed when going through them, especially some of the books that we'd had boxed up for a while was that the smell was somehow comforting. I wouldn't say that they smell nice, but the small was familiar and comfortable. I have 2 copies of one book. One is a paperback in good shape. The other is a ratty old paperback with tape holding the cover in place. I kept both. I'd like to read the story again, but I don't want the one to fall apart any more than it already is. I also just couldn't make myself get rid of the old ratty copy.