Ironic, perhaps, that I suggest the following article for our readers, on this medium. For Ed Simon exhorts in strong language for a return to the printed page, to immerse ourselves in books, in stories and characters, durable bindings and tactile paper, to sweeps of landscapes and getting lost in timeless tales…to which this fellow bibliophile can only respond, ‘hear, hear!’, or perhaps, with Saint Augustine, ‘tolle, lege, tolle, lege!’.
As Simon puts in:
The ephemerality of the internet is attractive to entropy, for how much of what’s been written over the past few decades has all but vanished, our prodigious output a daily burning of the Library of Alexandria, while stone, papyrus, vellum, and paper can endure for centuries. A printed book is a living animal with flesh of paper and ink of blood, so that compared to turning pages, mere scrolling is anemic.
We may add to these words the wise advice of Anthony Esolen on collecting your own library with little cost. There are myriads of books out there, and it is our task to preserve, and read, them. At least, the ones that matter. For, as today’s saint John of Damascus says, matter is good, and good that we live within it.
In Praise of Print: Why Reading Remains Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse