Do Books Still Matter?

One of my clearest, earliest memories is sitting on the well-worn carpet of a library within reach of the low-slung shelves that housed the children’s picture books. As I remember pulling title after title off the shelves and into my lap, I am overtaken with a remnant sense of excitement and possibility…of anticipation of what I might discover.

It is an odd feeling to look back now, on the far side of a decades-long career “making” books, and consider that experience as somehow prescient. Of course, plenty of people my age have a history enriched and empowered by a free library card—I know I am not unusual in that regard. But I have literally devoted my life to understanding and composing and appreciating all the pieces that complete the physical specimen we call a “book”—and I am fairly certain that devotion originated on that library floor.

One of the many libraries I’ve loved in my life: Baxter Memorial Library in Sharon, Vermont.

It is often heard in these technologically driven times that we don’t read as much, and when we do read, we don’t choose books. There is plenty of evidence that demonstrates this is, in fact, true, in particular when you factor in all the different ways we absorb the stories we once relied on books to tell us. In one sense, we are now caught in a constant current of creative content, so perhaps there is less time and need to seek out the longer, slower forms shared by the novel and biography, the memoir and instructional guide. It may be that we are returning to a tradition of oral storytelling (audiobooks, podcasts) that allows us to rest the eyes beset with a never-ending stream of visual information on our phones, our computers, our vehicle dashboards.

And then there is that little issue that AI presents, filling the virtual bookshelves with infinite options, each one a little less special than the last.

But it is in these inarguable realities that we can recognize that books in their truest form—well edited, carefully proofread, designed with purpose, and produced with quality—do indeed still matter, for one because our human nature tends to value those things that are harder to find and thus in higher demand. Within the weeds of the machine-generated, the purely human stands out and gains appeal. And for another, because humans are creative beings who are driven to tell stories, and the telling is just as important, if not more so, than the reading or hearing. The act of writing has therapeutic purpose, it nurses our curiosity by giving us a reason to seek and learn, and it provides as much personal enjoyment and sense of accomplishment as cooking a meal, knitting a sweater, or recording a song. Maybe when we put less emphasis on the question of, “Will it sell and make me money?” and more on, “Does it say what I want it to say to the world?” writing a book is once more an art form and once again an invitation to others to join us in a place of excitement, possibility, and discovery.

Wouldn’t we be so lucky.

— Rebecca