Dead tree time

There is never enough time to read

Last week I wrote about how physical books require a commitment of space.

This week, I want to talk about another commitment of great books.

Time

A book is a commitment of time.

The greater the book, the more time it requires of you.

Not only in reading it, since some books can be read in a short period of time, but also in the time you will spend thinking about the ideas in the book.

This can easily stretch into hundreds of hours for really great books.

You will be having a conversation years later and something will trigger a memory and you will bring up an idea from a book you read years ago. This has happened to me over and over again.

And the time commitment isn’t just for the reader.

I am not yet an author, but I know that writing a book is a massive time commitment.

An author can spend years of their life writing and rewriting a book in order to carefully craft an experience for their readers, often for very little direct monetary compensation.

However, from the reader’s perspective, the return on investment of time and money of a good book is an astounding bargain.

A book is a commitment in time.

What the author wrote down was the summation of their lives and experience up to that moment.

So, a book is also a snapshot of time encoded into an unchangeable physical artifact. If you want to edit the meaning or message of the book you will have to reprint it.

So books have a unique way of representing their specific era.

Not only in content and style, but in presentation.

A 1980’s business book represents “the 80’s” as much as shoulder pads, perms and pant suits.

Other books seem almost timeless and if it weren’t for the natural aging of the artifact itself you would have a difficult time telling how old it is.

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I would write more, but honestly I have a book that I want to read…