When I was a young boy, my father used to always take me to the barnes and nobles In Forest Hills, NY. It was a place I used to love, and every book and magazine I touched had a a story and reason behind it. I remember when I used to read a goosebumps story, and then I I went to another section to read about zombies and ghosts. I don’t really remember the contents of the book, but I remember the art of the covers, the trendy fonts the titles had, the hair color of those teenagers of the 90’s, the baggy jeans and the fashion of the time period. Reading books, magazines, and newspapers gave me several experiences of learning, art, and culture and then it all just got digitized and its appreciation just fell off.

After reading “Traces”, I realize a clean copy of a book has no charm and uniqueness. I have had several books I have read in the past and always highlighted things, so that I can go back and understand it better later. I feel though these are the same books my kids might one day read and my highlights will allow them to question and understand why the highlights are there. A clean copy might not have the same effect. This is precisely why preserving a book is important.

There are several religious texts in the world and sure many of them have the same content, but the build of the books and the materials tell a story of each time period and give you a better feel of the people behind it. A digital copy of these texts now are widely available and also include digital tools to understand them, but does not give readers the feel of actually carrying around a Quran, Bible, etc made out of gold and vellum. Physical books allow a person to share all the love behind it and  something digital books can never do.

My uncle was a NYC cab driver in the late 90’s,  once the late Peter Jennings mother left a phone in his cab and when my uncle returned it, Mr Jennings saw this as a kind thing to do and gifted my uncle an autographed copy of his book the Century. Although I read the book many times, and Ive told many other to read it my copy is still different.  My families copy has a humble story behind it thats way better than the books content itself. Mr Jennings autographed the inside and wrote “your a good man” to my uncle and this makes all the difference. This represented a middle class man meeting a media elite and although it was such a small event it was everything us working hard people are and it was being recognized by a Man of recognition. Our copy will tell our future family members how humbled we are and the book itself will always be a symbol of love and how great it is to be a hard working nice person.  Digital books are giving us more access but we need to keep traces and paper books to preserve our history.