I was reading a book series from my local library and for reasons I don’t understand they were missing the third or fourth book in the series. Probably damaged or lost. I even thought I could check the local (especially used) bookstores, buy a copy and then gift it to the library, but there’s a new edition that has a completely different vibe and size, with 2024 prices so I thought better of it. So I’d heard of Anna’s Archive and I got it there. Then it turned out one of the last books was unavailable too, can’t recall if it was missing or someone else had it out and wasn’t going to return it any time soon.

I was just trying to finish this writer’s corpus on a reread of their later material. It’s not that I’m cheap. I own a paper and audiobook copy of several of my favorite books. Including this author, so I’ve paid her twice. I just avoided the trap some of my friends long ago were falling into of hoarding books, by only keeping books I intend to read again. So any completionist tendencies have always been resolved via library or electronic editions.

I’m getting older now, and my first real confrontation with my own mortality came up with books. I have several years worth of books even if I were retired and reading three or four a week. New things come out all the time, and new voices. I haven’t read some of these books in ten years or more. Am I really going to read them again before… So a couple years ago I reread Dune for what will likely be the last time and sold my ratty old yellow copies to a used bookstore. If I do it again it will likely be audiobook.

I was firmly in the anti-audiobook camp until I heard the Dune (don't remember whose adaptation). Amazing experience. I still much prefer books (ebooks, because I can carry thousand to choose from when I inevitably finish the one I read), but I have since listened to several audiobooks and I really like how different yet oddly familiar it is, compared to reading.