I have a lot of books

That poem is titled “Early Capitalism,” and it’s so pitch-perfect, it hurts. Many thanks to Matthew Ogle’s pome, which is blessedly back again for the season.

I don’t have any links for you this time, but I did stop playing Tears of the Kingdom long enough to write down some thoughts about books. Now, back to the contraption.

In the twenty-teens, I was an obsessive Kindle consumer. It was my preferred way to read, commuting to work or laying in bed; the digital format felt like a physical improvement over differently (and often inconveniently) sized and weighted tomes.

But recently, I realized that the titles I enjoyed so much during those years have been lost to me. I don’t see their spines on my shelves; I can’t flip through their pages on a whim. I don’t read via Kindle anymore, and while I could go back to the app to re-download each book, the digital versions can’t provide the same casual browse-and-reminisce experience that paper can.

That inaccessibility becomes particularly galling whenever one of these titles gets adapted to the screen (as has happened more than once in recent months). I’ll watch a show or movie to see how it compares to my memory of the text—only to realize my memory of the text is wobbly at best. And without the books on my shelves, I can’t help that memory along, which leads to a lot of unanswered questions: “When did that happen in the book?” and “Who’s that?” and “Did they keep any of the original plot?” (Usually: no.)

So I did the only thing I could do: I bought them all again. Welcome to my shelves, time-damaged paperbacks of Wool, Dune, The Peripheral, The City and the City, The Daylight Gate, The Song of Achilles, The Windup Girl, and The Sparrow. The trickiest part was finding the covers I remember, rather than updated media-tie-in versions (“Now a major BBC TV series!”). The best part was finding discarded library copies.

It’s not that I didn’t know that physical books mattered—after all, my shelves are positively ruined with books I’ve kept (through dozens of moves!) as much for what reading them represented to me as for their actual content. But it’s been a welcome reminder of how crucial it is to be able to return to the text, to reread the words, to connect the tactile with the cognitive. How continuously the experience of reading runs long after the narrative has ended.

There’s another reason I’ve had print books on my mind: with my recent acquisitions, I’m running out of shelf space. Some of that space is currently being taken up by copies of the books I wrote—so I’ve decided to do a big giveaway to clean house. For the whole month of June, if you buy ANY book from A Book Apart, I will send you a FREE signed copy of either of my books, Everyday Information Architecture or You Should Write a Book. Super-smart move if you want two-for-one, or if you’ve already got a copy of my books and want one to pass along to a friend!

Just contact me with a picture of your receipt, your mailing address (continental US only, sorry international pals!), and which of my books you’d like. Buy a book, get a book, save my shelves!

(Oh, and Mat’s made the same offer for his books, too!)

ALSO ICYMI: ABA books are now available from libraries and bookstores all over the world! This is a recent change to ABA’s distribution model, making it easier for folks everywhere to access ABA content anywhere. Of course, you can always buy directly from the ABA website, but now you can also ask your community library to carry ABA titles, purchase from your favorite purveyors, and support your local bookshop!

Support the writers’ strike by donating to the Entertainment Community Fund, an organization that acts as a (much-needed) social safety net for writers, actors, performers, and everyone else in the entertainment industry.

And Happy Pride! Don’t forget: corporations are bullshit, ACAB, and queer communities need love and money. Start with the Trans Women of Color Collective and the Transgender Law Center, both of which focus on building opportunity, empowerment, and advocacy for trans folks.

Survive and thrive, friends.
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