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Books on paper? - or, heaven-forbid, electronically

The irrepressible Philip Adams in his weekly column in The Australian addresses the issue of books and questions whether a book on an ipod or laptop can really ever replace the beauty of the bound volume - even more so when the book is on a bookshelf.

"Book. I like the two "o"s in the middle of that wonderful, venerable, beautiful word.

They look like the eyes you need to read one. Books. We ban them and burn them, yet they remain the bricks that, for good and ill, built our world and I'm buggered if I'm going to see them used as landfill. Though we can take it as read that would have been a good idea with Mao's little red one or Hitler's Mein Kampf.

Landfill is the latest threat for books, the final form of censorship. Thanks to smartypants technology, the book is deemed redundant. And there are traitors to the book everywhere. A few weeks back, a highly regarded publisher told me he couldn’t wait to see the last of the damned things.

Like the antique print technology you’re using now – the newspaper that delivered this magazine – books are bulky, heavy and costly to transport. And books take up miles of shelving. Better to consign them to the history they played the central role in creating."


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