What does it mean to collect?

“The most profound enchantment for  the collector is the locking of individual items within a magic circle in which they are fixed as the final thrill, the thrill of acquisition, passes over them. Everything remembered and thought, everything conscious, becames the pedestal, the frame, the base, the lock of his property. The period, the region, the craftsmanship, the former ownership- for a true collector the whole backround of an item adds up to a magic encyclopedia whose quintessece is the fate of his object”.

Reading this paragraph, I was brought back to my younger days, thinking about the ways I “collected” toys, cards, etc. I remember the way I cherished this “disorder and order” and how I was so proud of this collection,

Though it seems as though putting an emphasis on the importance of the books background and its physicality is in a way inevitable and that paperback books are much better option as opposed to e-books/text files, I found that this matter isn’t so black and white. I remember collecting my favorite genres of e-books back in 6th grade. Not the most common way of getting into “e-book collecting”  but I got into e-books because I wanted to read Korean Sci-Fi novels from the United States. I had recently moved to the States then, and I was not enjoying reading books/novels in English.

I remember certain e-books were much harder to find than others, and for some it took hours if not days. These books were mostly in a txt file, and was attached to a blog owned by someone. Though these weren’t hard copies, I did not feel any less attached to them than I did with my other hard copy books. Though I knew having 100 txt files in my electronic dictionary(I know right?) make it look less “special”, but  Organizing these text files and reading them, I can say that I grew to enjoy collecting these books, as much as reading them.

Though my experience attests to the fact that digital copies of books can still provide ownership and that joy of collecting them, it may be the case that hard copies with their physical copy may have its edge on this department still. However, I feel as though the appeal e-book collecting has for collectors are the ease of organization and carrying. It was easy for me to collect 100+ books online and organize them and carry them; I couldn’t say the same about hard copies.