My husband and I like to think of ourselves as kind and generous people. But when it comes to lending out books? Suddenly, we both channel Ebenezer Scrooge.
We’re happy to hand a neighbor a cup of sugar without expecting them to pay it back. We’ll lend out a few extra chairs for a dinner party confident they’ll find their way home. But books? They tend to wander off and never return. (To be fair, there’s a small chance that some of the books on our own shelves didn’t start life with us. Oh dear.)
When we moved from Los Angeles to Seattle, the moving company sent a long checklist, asking about TVs, couches and microwaves. No one asked how many boxes of books we had. Watching tall, muscular movers blanch at the sight of those boxes was unforgettable.
That love for the written word is probably why, when Lisa B. and I were chatting online after an Ask the Rabbi Q&A about AI, I mentioned how valuable it still is to own an encyclopedia even though you can now find more current information with a few clicks.
Here’s that discussion if you’re curious.
When our children were growing up, the store Half-Price Books exerted a magnetic pull on us. Adding to the Childcraft set one of our daughters received as a gift, we shopped there for all sorts of secondhand encyclopedias. Some were general and some specific, like an encyclopedia of the Civil War—all for a few dollars! And what a contrast it is compared to today’s online searching.
Leaving aside the whole “Do we absorb more from a printed page than a screen?” debate, there’s something wonderfully different about flipping through a real encyclopedia. If you type “Black Sea” into a search engine, you’ll get exactly that—articles about the Black Sea with links to related topics. But if you look up “Black Sea” in an encyclopedia, you might accidentally stumble into an entry on Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. Turn a few more pages and suddenly you’re reading about basketball or Bolshevism. Sure, some facts are out of date, but your curiosity takes a journey instead of staying on one narrow path.
The internet, on the other hand, tends to feed us more of what we already like. It builds us a cozy little echo chamber. A printed encyclopedia doesn’t care what we want. It just offers what is. It invites surprise. And best of all, it invites community. At our dinner table, many a lively conversation ended with someone dashing off to grab a volume and then reading aloud to the rest of us. That’s a far cry from everyone scrolling silently through separate screens.
The Internet and artificial intelligence truly are amazing. They can make us astonishingly productive. Alternatively, they can weaken us by serving as crutches for our intellect. One of the major challenges facing parents today is figuring out how to allow our children to attain the first without succumbing to the second.
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I am really enjoying reading or listening to your updates. Just thought to share following. I have bought your book “Buried Treasure” last week from online “World of Books” website which sells second hand books.
After two days of wait, I got my book and was surprised and felt so happy when i opened first page .. it says “ to Aunt Miriam, with love, signed by RABBI DANIEL LAPIN”. I am so thrilled and will preserve the book ..
Well, Nathaniel, we hope that Aunt Miriam enjoyed it as much as you do.