I love reading books.  Real books with pages, smells, and the complete tactile experience of reading.  I also have way too many books (last count was around 800+).  Since realizing that my book collection would likely take over the house if I did not do something different, I have been reading some books on my eReader (Nook). Previously   I had only been buying the novels that are quick reads that require little thought to absorb the story.  I like to call them “airplane novels”.  Recently I started purchasing books that I will want to read multiple times on my Nook, mostly books with higher page counts.  Too many times have I been smacked in the face by a Tad Williams novel because I fell asleep while reading.  Getting hit in the face with a Nook hurts considerably less and you don’t lose your page.

This is all well and good, but I still feel the need to have paper copies of these massive books that I love.  I am so afraid of having the digital copy get lost or destroyed that I find it unnecessary to have a hard copy of it as well.  Totally not saving any money here.  I have the same fear of the pictures that I take getting lost as well.  This fear is well founded as all of the digitals of my color wedding photos are now gone due to a hard drive malfunction in our NAS (network attached storage).  All I have now are the wedding albums that were printed for us.  This is all anyone had before we entered the digital era, I guess.

Due to this fear, I have been making a family yearbook each year with my favorite pictures of the past year.  It makes a great coffee table book and gives me the feeling of security that I need.  To go one step further, I have started making a bound book of each year of blogging on my other blog.  That blog is a just for family one (too many personal details to be public) and is a chronicle of life with L.  It is basically his baby book with more pictures than you can put in the pre-made ones.  I cannot trust that our blogs will be around forever, so I want hard copies of my words and thoughts.  Maybe it is just my ego expressing a need for me to make something lasting in this world.  Maybe I just like to make things I can show people.  Maybe I just like to spend money needlessly.

Whatever the reason, I will keep making my paper copies of my digital life.