> there are disadvantages: ergonomics, space, cost, environment.

I read a lot, was really into ebooks and now mostly buy paper books. The inverse of the cost point iis a big reason, cost of ebooks is much more than paper books in a lot of cases because there is no second hand ebook market.

Environmentally I think it's complicated- an ebook is certainly better, but an ebook reader itself is much worse for the environment than many books. I can't claim any moral high ground since I have both.

There are some fields where there are a real measurable advantages of physical books, essentially as an archive.

I can name two:

1) Chemical Engineering 2) Classics

In both cases the physical book may be the only place to find certain kinds of valuable info.

In the case of Chem E, I was told this by my father, also a Chem E, who said that some of these old books contained values and tests that were found nowhere else. And while a lot of that is available in modern form, not all of it is.

In the case of classics, I'm cribbing from David Butterfield here, who has a great book tour on YouTube where expands on this at length (4+ hours).

In the 18th and 19th century the level of education was higher and there were simply more people around who were working at the highest level in the field. Their speculations were written down in physical books and nowhere else. Many of these were valuable and showed new insights you won't find elsewhere else, especially for professionals in the field.

Here's an example. The copies that we have of, say, Homer, are copies of copies. Pretend for a moment that Homer actually wrote in English. We can imagine a line in the "original" (a copy of a copy), that says:

He of the stout quarrel chest said:

It kinda works - stout men quarrel, I guess. But you know what would work even better? He of the stout barrel chest. You can make a case that this was an instance of bad copying and should be corrected in editions going forward, especially if you can cite additional evidence.

Multiple this by the Greek & Roman corpus and all the possible permutations and you have a good reason to turn to those books that earlier writers thought very deeply about.

For me the advantage is simplicity. I pick up the book and I read it. No matter where or when, I know I can read it. If the book gets damaged, I pick up another book, I don't mind. The problem with digital books is that I need 3 different things working together: 1) a (charged) reading device, 2) corresponding software, 3) the actual digital book.

So the reading device can be put in unmaintained mode any time by the company who sells it. That sucks. Same goes for the corresponding software, although in this case I have more flexibility sometimes (i.e., I can install some open source software... but that's a hassle in itself). As per the actual digital book, don't get me started with DRM. One can pirate books, though, but then some people have ethical considerations.

I typically buy second-hand books. It's the best deal for me because I don't have the feeling to be super protective with them, and they are very cheap.

I hope you're saying that is only applicable to you personally and not applying that to every other human on the planet. There are plenty of real world advantages a physical book has over an ebook, even if you can't think of them. On of my favorites was not having to turn my book off during airplane take off and landing. Also, books do not run out of battery so they do not need to be recharged. You can have multiple books open at the same time, admittedly, this is more for during research times and not just a simple reading session. But I'm not going to sit here typing out every single difference I can think of just because you can't think of any

Keep in mind that I primarily consume ebooks, but I generally find books cheaper unless we're counting piracy. You can get physical books from used bookstores for remarkably cheap and ebook/new book prices are kept as close as publishers can get away with.

That said, there are clear advantages to books. You can't page through an ebook nearly as well as a physical reference book. That's admittedly somewhat balanced by the existence of search. Physical books can also pay much more attention to the aesthetics of print and layout. Eink readers and epub/mobi/az3 formats are atrocious for this, whereas iPads with PDFs are somewhat better. There's still works that can't be captured in those formats though, like pop-up books, raised/embossed/textured printing (which I've seen used in poetry), or illuminated works. And books don't need power.

In terms of content, there’s not much pros. But we are physical creatures and the physicality of a book can be an (pleasurable?) experience in itself.

An embarrassingly large number of epubs have absolute no care put into formatting, in my experience. That and how do I get my "old book paper smell" fix and those beautifully illustrated hardback covers neatly lined on my shelves?

Otherwise, I agree.