I finally visited that old bookshop in Portland that only sells books from the 1800s

Walked into Powells offshoot downtown last Saturday. They had this whole debate about whether reading old books changes how you think versus just being a novelty. One side says the language and ideas from back then make you smarter. Other side says it's just hipster gatekeeping and a $40 book with yellow pages. I spent 45 minutes reading a worn out copy of some travel journal from 1842 and honestly felt something different. Can reading books from 150 years ago really make you see things differently or are we just forcing meaning onto old paper?

2 comments

2 Comments

hollym128d ago

My buddy Tom grabbed a first edition of "Two Years Before the Mast" from 1840 at that same shop. He said he got about 30 pages in and realized the guy who wrote it was just a regular sailor complaining about the food and bad weather, not some deep philosopher. Tom told me it actually made him feel closer to the past than any history book ever did, like overhearing a real person grumbling instead of reading a lesson. He said the worn pages and the handwriting style just hit different, no gatekeeping about it.

olivias888d ago

The whole thing reminds me of how people treat old tools or furniture versus modern ones, it's the same kind of debate. You can tell the difference when you use something that was built to last and meant to be handled daily, not just looked at. That travel journal probably felt different because it was written by someone who didn't know they were writing for the future, and that raw honesty is hard to fake.