Book's Currency

Ink and Paper have a Presence

 A bookshelf filled with books, one can see them without any power outages.  They are always there, even in the dark, with your senses, you know where they are.  If you’ve read them or want to, they are a constant, always engaged reminder of your TBR or TBR-ed.  You can never turn off your bookshelf or blindly walk past it.

Beautiful: Books & Knowledge

They are a culmination of art and knowledge.  Non-poetry & non-drama: non-fiction can be included as an intellectual art.   

Knowledge that’s purified and created into an art form is something to celebrate.  Just ask any bibliophile!  They can chatter for days about the art of loving books and not being afraid to resort to wormory.  

There's another type of book collector.  One that celebrates only the aesthetic nature of books.  What a book symbolizes, even having certain titles on their contracted shelf.  Could they be celebrating the art of bookery like us worms?  An architect is hosting a fundraiser for his alumni association.  He contracts a shelf of Building Design History.  His own books on the subject are mainly graffitied blueprints, hardly suitable for a fundraiser. 

They Symbolize our Cultural Heritage

Since the birth of storytelling, we’ve all shared a lineage of books.  In some way, we are all linked to a few archetypes, myths and legends; religious or not.  Libraries in every city hold the local heritage.  If a book is kept long enough to survive the new school drive, future generations can come full circle.  The word, drive, has a heritage of it’s own.  In recent memory, it can mean to control a vehicle, a floppy disk drive or a school fundraiser.

Books contain all of this.  They chronicle the intellectual and artistic development of writers, maturation or degradation of words and various cultural societies.  A passionate reader can indulge in the literary banter between writers: contemporaries, ancestors and even prophetics.  

    

A bookshelf is a reader’s personal own heritage.  Their own shrine to the collective heritage that makes up humanity.  It’s such a gift, a downright blessing whoever engineered these homes for book friendly alters.  Libraries and bookshelves are the altars for our cultural heritage.  May they forever alter us.

Becomes an Artifact for an Engaged Reader

They are the full circle.  To hold a dusty book that moved your own ancestors.  To pass on a book that’s rich in your own memories.  To learn which books inspired your favorite authors.  To read these books.  Is transcendent.  

Screen & Data have no Presence

 It’s so easily forgotten and dismissed.  Tech Data is yesterday’s lunch.  Gobbled up and forgotten about.  I think tech data is one step removed from us.  We cannot touch data.  The computer, sure but never the data.  We cannot interact with it, only consume it.  A flash drive can never be as dusty.  But, the internet is much faster than a scribe.

Was inspired from this quote:

"This commercial genre is exceedingly popular with interior decorators, so much so that, as if to stay a step ahead of the skepticism, bulk book suppliers have specialized by tailoring books for the client’s purported general interests (to make it really seem like this is a library reflecting the owner’s personal literary tastes), while still color-coordinating book covers to match the pillow slips."

From this fantastic article by James McWilliams:

http://www.themillions.com/2017/01/the-physical-book-will-surely-endure-but-will-it-endure-for-the-right-reason.html