Physical books are still worth it

I’ve gone a few years since reading a physical book from start to finish. Why is this? It’s not like I don’t value the knowledge I get from reading.

Part of is it because I grew up thinking that I just don’t have time to read a whole book. I had school and university, work, other real life commitments… reading a whole book is just not realistic. In hindsight, after picking up books again, I realise that this isn’t strictly true. I was wildly wasteful with my time, spending hours upon hours watching Youtube and the like, not learning anything useful in the long term. If I had focused more on consistently avoiding mindless entertainment, I could have spent more time reading up on fundamentally useful knowledge (and maybe even also more time with friends!).

Another major reason was that I compared the costs and benefits of reading from online sources, even book PDFs, to reading a physical book. I had decided that reading online is simply superior. No costs for manufacturing or wait times for delivery, and easy access wherever I am. Seems like a no-brainer. That is, until you realise that there is a fundamental difference in the quality of the experience of reading, attributable to the mediums. We are fundamentally accustomed to having short attention spans on the web. When we have thousands of options open to us, we need to have the ability to quickly discern in a matter of seconds whether we want to stay on a page and skim-read the valuable bits, or if it’s more worthwhile to jump to a different page or website.

Compare that to books. At the very least for me, my mind’s been trained for having a relatively long attention span when it comes to reading books. I can recall spending long periods of time reading books at school. We often had an hour timeslot in the morning which was silent reading time. It was admittedly hard to get my brain used to reading for long periods of time, but I have fond memories of the books I read, such as Skulduggery Pleasant, Cirque Du Freak, and The Last Dragon Chronicles. It is much harder to sit down and read a PDF of a book. There’s so many possibilities (distractions) open to you! There’s something deeply primal about owning a physical copy of a book with pages that I can turn, which leads me to actually reading the content quicker than if it were on a magical (digital) device.

This isn’t a great reason to own physical books, but I enjoy the aesthetics of them, too. I’ve always yearned to have a room filled with bookshelves upon bookshelves of books which I’ve read. It feels like a physical manifestation of the work I’ve put into becoming more knowledgeable on various subjects. You could spend all your time reading up on the most useful knowledge online, and that would be great! But it’s a nice added extra to have all those books to show off.

2025/09/22