Are books a thing of the past ?

I think books are still very popular as well as having a Kindle.
I use both, the Kindle having the advantage of having many books on it which helps with storage but I enjoy having a physical book as well. I don’t get library books now as the often greasy much handled aspect puts me off but buy from bookshops which often give one book free if you buy two.

At the age of 81 I wonder just how many books I have read over the years. I could read before I was 4 and came from a family of readers, especially my beloved granny, who when she first moved to a smallholding she had bought, had no electricity to begin with. So it was lovely tilley lights and the wonderful evenings where she had two big old armchairs that also had sort of sides up above your head, so that you snuggled down, shielded from the draughts, close to the aga fire, with the occasional sound of logs or coal shifting, and the gentle hiss of the tilley lights, which gave good light to read by. We sat, engrossed in our books, but with the company of each other, and the dogs lying on the rug. Wonderful memories. I progressed through school, reading all sorts of things and once doing a literary Oliver Twist, when I asked the school librarian if they had any more books as I had read all the fiction books they had. She did not believe me and tested me by picking out random books and asking what they had been about. When I could answer every thing she asked I was told to wait there , and she went off and came back with three more teachers and proceeded to repeat the procedure. I started to feel worried because they talked quietly amongst themselves and kept looking at me, but was then reassured by the english teacher going off and coming back with a new - to me - book and promising more to come. Years later when I began to work in London, I felt starved of book time, but then got into the pattern of adding a book to my bag for the tube to join my book by the bed and the other by the chair and the library books each week. So life has gone on and books have been there through good and bad, and are still precious to me. Favourite old books console and cheer me during difficult times, new travel books inspire me to still go physically if I can to other places, or if not I can get a patch of reading everything I can get my hands on about a place and enjoy that. I get hooked on a particular author and ready every book they have written and still my great pleasure is to go into a second hand book shop to find who knows what. My friends and family know that a book token is still a favourite birthday or christmas present. Books have been a joy and libraries my favourite places in life, and as a teacher and lecturer I hope that I have passed on the love of reading to others. However they do it, so long as they read and enjoy it , it is the reading that frees their minds but I shall remain an ardent actual book reader for the rest of my life.

Libraries are busy, book groups abound, and many parents are vocal about limiting time in screens, favouring books, so, no, I don't think that books are endangered.

I love my Kindle. The portability and accessibility of it. However I do love paper copies of books and visit our independent bookshop just up the road from me. Use it or lose it and it’s quirky and lovely to mooch in. Tactile sensations are a joy.

Mention of seeing what fellow readers are reading when out and about was a pleasure I used to enjoy but more folk are reading on their phones etc now so it’s sadly Access Denied!

Libraries and bookshops are my favourite places in my local town, I get an immediate uplift entering them. If I had a house that could accommodate a choice between a libary and a cinema room, a library would definitely be my first choice.

I'm an avid reader and two of my kids love to read .
Just recently,I've had to sort through my huge book collection and I've filled over 35 storage boxes with books thst I just can't live without .
The day that my local book store closes will be a day of mourning for me.

We are a family of genetic book readers, my home, both AC's homes and both GC's bedroom are awash with books. DGD is reading English at university.

I have a heap of unread books and my trusty Kindle is there for going to sleep reading and any travel.

The biggest threat to the physical book are companies such as Anthropic and Amazon buying physical out of print and secondhand books in bulk to feed high speed scanners. The spines are sliced off to separate the pages. The loose pages are fed through high speed commercial document scanners to digitize the text. Once scanned the physical books are typically discatded, recycycled, pulped or shredded. However, many are aware of this iniative by AI, secondhand book sales are apparently booming. There is a backlash from booksellers and authors who have raised strong alarms arguing that industrial scale destruction permanently erases rare out of print books.

On a personal note, I have a few favoured authors who libraries don't stock, well of course space limits them from doing that, but sometimes they can be ordered. I can't envisage a world without books they've been with me from my earliest days. I understand why some prefer a Kindle, lighter easy to transport, but there is something very enjoyable about opening a brand new book we've been wanting to read

Definitely not, I do use my kindle a lot of the time, but nothing beats a physical book (especially a new one)

Books not a thing of the past....yet. I'm an avid reader and prefer a real book with pages. I value my local library so use it so as not to lose it.

I had loads of books but I donated most when I moved house and now read library books every month. I’m always picking up my current book for a quiet read. A lot of my family read too.

Ah, that reply was for imaround, re -smelling pages. But is fine, it works.

nanna8

So many wonderful and cheap books are available now in Op shops, usually around $2 each and looking brand new, it makes you wonder if anyone reads books now. I like a book in my hand rather than online though I still do read online books on holidays where you can’t carry many books in luggage. I have a houseful of books and am quite attached to some of them but I think I am part of a dying breed. It cheers me that one of my granddaughters is an avid book reader, but she is the only one.

Oh I love to smell the pages, and to put a bookmark in so that can see how far I have read and how far there is left to go.
Love libraries too, wonderful places.
And my ACs love actual books, their GCs are surrounded by them so are growing up loving them too.

When we moved house we were overrun by books. They ended up in double layers on the floor by the time we moved. I got rid of them all. My trusty Kindle is jam packed with books now. I used it only for leisure reading and it has a lovely cover. I don't miss real books and I've been an avid reader since I learned to read at 3 (I was at a no nonsense nursery school!)

I think there are benefits to both ebooks and traditional books. Ebooks don't require the storage space, they're often cheaper, and a lot of indie (independent) authors are publishing on Amazon because it's cheaper and easier for them to do so than to go through traditional publishers. Also, if there's a word or term you don't recognize, you can look it up instantly. However, real books have a tactile advantage. They're also great for a bedtime ritual because you don't have the blue light exposure.

On a recent train journey I saw three people reading books. One man, looked to be in his twenties, was reading a Bob Mortimer book. Another woman, probably in her early forties, was reading a Harlan Coban. There also was a woman in her sixties reading but I couldn't quite see what she was reading.

Wow, that was American wording of me wasn't it? 😁 Sorry.

Honestly? No. Around these parts, we now have parents refusing any tech in schools in the early years, before age 13 or so. My oldest needs an entire room in her house for a library and may very well keep Barnes and Noble in business.

Will it be like it was? Never again. Will the become completely obsolete? No. Too many people want to go and smell the pages.