Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for February 18, 2016

She’ll need a library ladder to complement her collection.

I agree with Arlo’s statement regarding the use of computers to do research however I also agree with the words of John Updike: “If the worst comes true, and the paper book joins the papyrus scroll and the parchment scroll in extinction, we will miss, I predict, a number of things about it.”

I want to know what happens to all of my “digital content” when Amazon or Apple go out of business. (Never say a company can’t go out of business. History has proven time and again that any company can.) The one thing about books is that they are physical and they are YOURS. They won’t disappear if the company that sold them to you does. We are all relying on good faith that these companies will always be there and that they won’t “alter the deal” and start charging us an annual “holding fee.”

That’s the good thing about Project Gutenberg. It features digitized free ebooks, many in the public domain and out of print.

It’s winter. Panel 3 need more work.A fire going in the fireplace and a side table with a glass of port or hot cocoa.

Picasa, an online photo storage site, is being shut down, by Google, I think. All those photos gone. I used to store pictures and thoughts on Geocities, which Yahoo suddenly shut down. Having it on paper and in your hand is where you put things of real value.

Even Captain Kirk and Captain Picard will still be reading actual books in the future.

A short skirt and Pharmakeus Ubik’s library ladder might rekindle Arlo’s interest in books, at least the ones on the top shelf.

I’m sitting in my den, surrounded by books, reading this on line. Its hard to break the print habit and I ’m not sure I want to!

CD’s were considered so much better than vinyl….Now everybody is going back to vinyl. Why? Because it’s sounds “warmer” The same thing will happen to books….Books on CD will thrive, because everybody drives so much…..Kindles might work in the car, but in front of a fireplace, only a real book will do….They just “sound” better, kinda like vinyl…

BTW, it’s just wrong that there isn’t a fire in the fire place….

The emergence and reemergence of things often depends, not on its efficiency or cheapness, but upon what people want to think about themselves. People don’t really need constant electronic social access, but having it plays to a certain self-image. There may well come a day when it becomes a point of pride that one only receives phone calls at home. People don’t drive uncomfortable, inefficient, and unstable Jeeps be cause they need to traverse rough country between their subdivision home and urban office. They drive them for image. And remember, no one can visit your home and gaze upon your digital library.

My home is decorated and insulated with well loved books

Said it before and I’ll say it again: both physical books and ebooks have their place and value. Some books are disposable and only used to pass some otherwise dreary time-ebooks are perfectly fine for that, but other books are works of art that can only be appreciated in a physical form. I have many books in e format, many books in physical format (altho Not as many as I once did-A&J’s library can probably use some pruning) and many of the same books in both formats.

Burn the books to keep warm. They ought to last for a winter or two.

She wants a library. He wants a hot tub.

You people just want to kill innocent trees.

With current technology, it is cost effective to print a single copy of a book. Yeah, it uses digital as an intermediate step, but that can be changed with the times, while the printed word remains.

Being that she’s surgically attached to her smart phone you’d think Janis would poo-poo on “dead tree” books and would only use an e-reader instead.

Love books. Retired and gave most of my books to grandkids. They actually put down the electronic devices and picked the books up to read. Grandma-1

Real books will never run out of battery. Very good when the apocalypse comes. :-)

Yes, that’s a display many book lovers would love to have. I know I would. Wood paneled library with fireplace, comfy chairs, rolling ladders, and a dog at my feet. Plus the cats, of course!

Nothing like curling in you favorite chair on a cold, snowy winters night by the fire with a good book and your favorite libation…….

I agree that electronic versions of stuff can go away. But beyond that, I prefer reading a physical book (or a physical newspaper)— even though I work in the info tech industry myself. The interesting thing is, polling shows that many “young people”— teens and 20’s— when polled, say they’d prefer reading a paper textbook over an E-version. Both of my 20-something daughters agree— one in college and one recently completed Med school.