I highlight often when reading on my kindle. I have created a small program that scrapes my highlights and sends me a daily email with one of them. I get it before I wake up and it’s the first thing I read once I check my email (usually that happens after my morning reading).

I find that this helps remember books that I read years ago, and usually the single quote is enough to jolt a series of memories about the book.

That said, I also own physical books and they are in glass bookshelves around my office and living room. I do like the looks of them and they can be a conversation starter as well when friends come over.

> I don’t have the same thing for the ebooks I’ve read, and it gives me a weird feeling of amnesia.

I have a similar feeling when it comes to my music collection, some of which includes rare recordings. I ripped everything and have it at my fingertips on my phone, computer, etc, but I often find that I’ve forgotten when I have. When I was younger, I kept it all on a shelf. Browsing one’s music collection (or a friend’s) was always a pleasant way to spend an evening socializing. With apps, that is all gone. I have recurring fantasies about building some kind of physical music player, with cartridges that one could insert into a “player”. The actual music would be stored centrally, but this would be more like a mnemonic device to make browsing more enjoyable. I could imagine a similar thing for ebooks.

I have mixed feelings about Kindle, but I mostly read books on my phone these days, and my Kindle library is always there. I also have a physical bookshelf, but if I'm not home I can't review it so in some ways it's often less tangible than my Kindle library which I always carry with me.

I'm not an ebook reader, but I would have assumed that these apps would have some sort of indication if you've read a book or not and if you've not read to the end some sort of progress. Like opening an ebook that you did not complete should hopefully take you to where you left off at a minimum. I'd also expect your app to have a management type of display where I'd expect some sort of sorting/filtering where you can see only the books completely read, the books started but not finished, and books not yet started. I'd even somewhat expect a skeuomorphic layout of books on a shelf that you could somehow rearrange like it was iPhone 1.0. Again, I'm not an ebook person and never used any of the apps, so maybe these are standard things. However, it should make things easier to know if you've read them or not.

Have you considered printing a book side and putting it on a wall as a growing poster while keeping a Calibre or Zotero collection in sync?

I share this feeling. When I want to free up some space, the books I get rid of are the ones I don't remember reading.

As you mentioned, it’s trends. There’s nothing really sticky or mass-adoption like. This also isn’t necessarily new, as polaroids have been trending for over a decade now.

Most of the same kids still scroll instagram, listen on spotify and etc. At least that’s what I’m seeing around me.

For me the advantage is simplicity. I pick up the book and I read it. No matter where or when, I know I can read it. If the book gets damaged, I pick up another book, I don't mind. The problem with digital books is that I need 3 different things working together: 1) a (charged) reading device, 2) corresponding software, 3) the actual digital book.

So the reading device can be put in unmaintained mode any time by the company who sells it. That sucks. Same goes for the corresponding software, although in this case I have more flexibility sometimes (i.e., I can install some open source software... but that's a hassle in itself). As per the actual digital book, don't get me started with DRM. One can pirate books, though, but then some people have ethical considerations.

I typically buy second-hand books. It's the best deal for me because I don't have the feeling to be super protective with them, and they are very cheap.

I hope you're saying that is only applicable to you personally and not applying that to every other human on the planet. There are plenty of real world advantages a physical book has over an ebook, even if you can't think of them. On of my favorites was not having to turn my book off during airplane take off and landing. Also, books do not run out of battery so they do not need to be recharged. You can have multiple books open at the same time, admittedly, this is more for during research times and not just a simple reading session. But I'm not going to sit here typing out every single difference I can think of just because you can't think of any

Keep in mind that I primarily consume ebooks, but I generally find books cheaper unless we're counting piracy. You can get physical books from used bookstores for remarkably cheap and ebook/new book prices are kept as close as publishers can get away with.

That said, there are clear advantages to books. You can't page through an ebook nearly as well as a physical reference book. That's admittedly somewhat balanced by the existence of search. Physical books can also pay much more attention to the aesthetics of print and layout. Eink readers and epub/mobi/az3 formats are atrocious for this, whereas iPads with PDFs are somewhat better. There's still works that can't be captured in those formats though, like pop-up books, raised/embossed/textured printing (which I've seen used in poetry), or illuminated works. And books don't need power.

In terms of content, there’s not much pros. But we are physical creatures and the physicality of a book can be an (pleasurable?) experience in itself.

An embarrassingly large number of epubs have absolute no care put into formatting, in my experience. That and how do I get my "old book paper smell" fix and those beautifully illustrated hardback covers neatly lined on my shelves?

Otherwise, I agree.

There's plenty of books that have revisions, but yes, the first version does not physically change. Then again, other than collectors, I don't know many people that have multiple books of each revision/reprint of the same book. To your point, it's not like you can read a book, go to bed, and then wake up to a modified book. However, you could damage your book and go to have it replaced with a different version. Say you loan/give your copy away knowing you can get a new one easier than having your recipient get a copy for themselves. Your new one could be different. It's happened to me

Digital files that you store on your own storage media with free software also can't change (without your intervention). But in new generations many only have phones, not even laptops.