Books are everywhere; and always the same sense of adventure fills us. Second-hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack. Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world.
Virginia Woolf
3 thoughts on “Books are everywhere”
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Do note that Woolf was born in 1882 and died in 1941.
The world has changed a wee bit in tbe last 20 years, to say nothing of the 60 before that.
So has the role of books.
As for diving into worlds of adventure:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgSr9tuJS18
Books are everywhere, more than ever, but so are other creative vehicles.
In fairness to Woolf, despite the fact that I will go online to find books that I want, there is a certain “thrill of the hunt” when one goes into a used bookstore, particularly (at least for me) when I hit the nonfiction section. You never know what you’re going to find, and sometimes what you find is pretty cool.
Once upon a time I haunted used bookstores for out of print SF classics.
Then ABEbooks came out.
And then ebooks hit the mainstream and brought the eternal backlist.
Haven’t been in one in ages because these classics come to me and precious little SF is out of print. The ebooks are everywhere.