If form can give rise to function, and I believe that it can, then this post and all the forums and blogs in the world serve a purpose totally at odds with the purpose of physical books. So.. I envy your library and hope you'll keep adding to it, and pass on your reverence of it.
For me it's rather it gives them presence rather than permanence. A book on a shelf is filling a space. It's visible. It's available for anyone to have a look. A book on an eink device is hidden. It's invisible. It's barely accessible. You could have thousands of books on an ebook reader and nobody would know it, because they can't see any of it.
I wonder what it is about the folks who are able to "get into" eBooks. Logically, I know all the value props -- great for travel and general minimalism, easy to highlight and search highlights, better for the environment, etc, etc -- but, for whatever reason, I just can't get my brain to do the thing.
On balance, I think I'm okay with it. I spend an enormous portion of my real-estate budget on books, and, frankly... what else would I spend it on? That's one of the key things that it's for, if you ask me.
I primarily use e-readers for reading pop fiction. I'm not bothered by their lack of physicality or impermanence for the same reason I don't have a problem with the impermanence of broadcast television; it's mass-market content meant to be enjoyed and forgotten.
Thanks! One small part of the great mystery of the human condition, resolved. ;)
If you view a book as a one time use, disposable good, it's not hard. That sounds far more disrespectful than I mean it, but if you're the type of reader that's reading many things for pleasure (possibly multiple books a week) and will likely only read them once, they become more like I might view a TV show: something I want to consume conveniently and not necessarily catalog permanently. In that case, eBooks are great.
I usually take a highlighter and a pen to most books these days. Interesting passages get marked up; the margins are perfect for capturing the related thought, realization of a tie-in to another book, and whatever else; and the growing forest of dog-ears helps me find my way back to harvest all the notes later.
(I'm actually really bad at going back and harvesting the notes into a useful digital format -- but I guess the presence of all of them on my bookshelf gives a nice safety blanket, you know? They're there, waiting for me.)
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=kindle,e...
The warm, larger display is a game changer for me.
What does this mean?
For the cost of one episode of Game of Thrones, you could publish hundreds of books. Even cheap garbage like reality TV costs enough per episode to publish several books (through a real publisher, would be even more if you count self-publishing).
I feel a similar bit of anxiety as you when it comes to fancy furniture though. I learned a few years ago that it makes sense to buy the good stuff -- but the question is looming in the back of my mind as I prepare to move again in a few months. The boxes (of books and everything else) are perhaps easier because I know I can move them myself and treat them gently, but I worry much more about the furniture getting roughed up during the journey.
Probably related to life phase: my parents picked very different furniture after kids moved out. Expensive with crap quality by design - eg. slanted legs under a chair while plenty in the family are on the heavy side.
The former is a mix of books that screw with the format (House of Leaves, S.) or graphic novels (Understanding Comics, Rise of the Ogre, Watchmen). The latter is mostly just formative fictions books for me (I've lent out Snow Crash ten or so times, I should really replace my copy).
It's like a slow version of having a drink or weed to get mildly randomized and form new ideas you would/could never while sober.
It's like the difference between directed and basic research. You need them both.
So the ordered bookshelf is necessary if you know what you want. It's a database.
But the unordered bookshelf is maybe not strictly necessary but certainly facilitates when you don't know what you want, or you don't even have a want but are simply open to seeing what happens for a bit. I cannot have a novel idea through intention, it must be instigated by something random.
unfortunately books are one of the most annoying things when you move.
I used to own a quite large stash of them, in the hundreds, not thousands, but started moving a lot, like every 6 months and I began hating them. Now they all live inside boxes in the basement of my house. I don't think I'm going to take them out anytime soon.
After a relative died, I was in their house while it was being cleaned up. They had a huge library of books, but a lot of them were unreadable because of mold/mildew and other issues (not just the typical lovely old book smell). It was such a pity.
As for what happens after our death, entropy by bureaucracy... the Crown will get the whole estate and eventually will figure it out. No living relatives, so who knows... not our problem.
Just out of curiosity, what will the Crown do with such inheritances? Do they distribute it amongst their network or something?
The thing is though... we've read nearly all of them between us. We probably have only 2% unread at any given time. That's still a good stack of options to read next, still a whole shelf we haven't touched.
For time, books feel denser and richer compared to TV and most films. Only music and poetry feels as dense and rich.
I wish I could say that there was order to our shelves and there was once several orders! Some parts are by publisher, some parts by theme! Mostly we buy books and add them where there is space.
As to wishlists, we purchase when we see things we want and we're not using wishlists. The things we order tend to be obscure and rare - not valuable, just obscure - so if we don't get them at the time we might not see them again. There's something nice about this... books arrive constantly, and that means there's always something exciting to discover.
Edit: https://www.librarything.com/ is invaluable. We initially got it to help us catalogue things for insurance purposes, but it proves extremely helpful at preventing us from buying the same book twice. Most recently published books only need their barcode scanned or ISBN entered, only the old ones need manual entry.