A Book is a Beautiful Thing
A lovely little video on books:
Small tidbit: One summer in college, I worked at the now-defunct Borders bookstore in downtown Seattle. My assigned section was the computer science section, and I can remember many days spent shelving and reorganizing books (although certainly not to the degree of this video). Many lamented the bankruptcy and closing of all Borders stores last year, and it’s interesting to see that Barnes & Noble has taken over its Internet and social media accounts, including Borders’ former Twitter and Facebook accounts. (The Borders.com website leads you to a Barnes & Noble store locator.) I hadn’t noticed it at the time, but it turns out that Borders sold its intellectual property to B&N as part of the bankruptcy proceedings.
While the book industry has seen many of the major shifts and challenges that also face the music industry, especially with the rise of electronic books and ebook readers, I think much like the music industry, there’s a place for the physical product alongside the electronic one. I still haven’t made the jump to ebooks myself, still too much attached to the tactility, the smell, the feel of words on a physical page.