the last holdout

In the Financial Times, Michael Skapinker writes in praise not just of books but of hardcover books:

I have shelves upon shelves of paperbacks – and I regret buying them all. They seemed a good idea at the time: they were cheaper than hardbacks. But the years, sunlight and central heating are taking their toll.

Norm Geras tells him to get real:

As someone in a position to look at my shelves and point to books I’ve actually owned for more than 30 years, I also know that wanting to re-read one or other of them I sometimes don’t want to read it in a decades-old edition. One can take a more free and easy attitude to the ownership of books, treating the rather dull and yellowed thing on your shelf as - what it is - just one physical representative of the work in question. You get yourself another copy.

Me, I’m just happy that people are talking about reading books. Oh yes—and I prefer to read paperbacks. But hardcover books sure do look pretty on the shelf: