Think about it. Look around your house right now. Where are your books?
Exactly where I want them to be? If I didn't want my books around I would put them in storage or resell them or something. I do do that with books I don't want to keep.
Books are clunky, wasteful, and take up more space in your life than they are worth.
Let me be very clear: you do not get to define what anything is worth to me. That isn't something I'll allow anyone to do but my own self.
Whether or not you read them, your average book spends 99.9% of its existence simply existing as glorified piece of clutter.
Nope. Looking at my bookshelves I feel certain things--nostalgia for the books I have finished and loved, remembrance of my own growth as a person, anxiety over the many (too many) I haven't gotten to yet--and am, in a way, satisfied. Nothing else makes me feel this way.
Clutter that was better off remaining a tree.
Impose an extra tax on pulp & paper mills then, if you think book printing carries certain externalities. Personally I think a single copy of Blood Meridian is worth more than even a hundred trees.
Not only that, printed books cost much more money than electronic / e-reader versions. Unless you read a book many times a year, it just doesn't make sense to own it. Would you buy a sweater or a car that you only used once or twice? And even if you love a book and you read it with obsessive devotion, chances are that all of that reading has caused it to start to fall apart and become ruined.
See above. This is only true if you treat physical books like some kind of disposable product and not a piece of art in and of themselves. No. The physicality of the book is the the opening credits to a television show. You can watch an episode of The Twilight Zone and skip the opening theme and the actual content of the episode will be the same, but the experience will certainly not be.
No. Enough of this nonsense. Just buy an e-reader, and start living a more sensible life.
E-readers are bleh. I hate having to keep the damn thing charged and updated. I hate how the E-books I own are intangible. It's the same feeling I get when I borrow a book from the library or when I used to rent a movie. A weird, creepy feeling, like I'm trespassing somehow. It doesn't matter why I feel this way or if it's rational or anything.