What We Will Lose

... there’s something else that may be lost if old-style books fade from the scene: the personality that authors — and the people who give books to others as presents — sometimes leave for posterity with their handwritten inscriptions.

Peter Khoury in The New York Times writes about some of the best book inscriptions he has come across, and laments that this added dimension to the physical book will be lost completely with the coming of ereaders.