![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
From a comment I left on another journal, which I figure is worth reposting:
The texture and heft of the pages in old books makes for an entirely different reading experience. It's kind of the opposite of reading through old letters, written on paper so thin it's almost like tissue. And then there's the scent, which modern books just don't have in the same way.
I stayed in a house out in the West of Ireland, many years ago, with a friend's family and several other families they knew. It was a very English house, very back-from-the-Colonies, with an elephant's foot umbrella stand, tiger skins on the walls, and on so, and it had bookshelves which were covered in books, which I figure must have bought by the yard, because they were all colour co-ordinated, and in nine out of ten of them, the pages were uncut.
I was fascinated, but didn't want to cut them, so I read them vertically, pushing the pages out into tubes and peering in to read the inside for the "inner" pages.
The texture and heft of the pages in old books makes for an entirely different reading experience. It's kind of the opposite of reading through old letters, written on paper so thin it's almost like tissue. And then there's the scent, which modern books just don't have in the same way.
I stayed in a house out in the West of Ireland, many years ago, with a friend's family and several other families they knew. It was a very English house, very back-from-the-Colonies, with an elephant's foot umbrella stand, tiger skins on the walls, and on so, and it had bookshelves which were covered in books, which I figure must have bought by the yard, because they were all colour co-ordinated, and in nine out of ten of them, the pages were uncut.
I was fascinated, but didn't want to cut them, so I read them vertically, pushing the pages out into tubes and peering in to read the inside for the "inner" pages.
