What is a Book?

What is a book?
Is it just a lot of equal size bits of paper, coverd with printing ink, and maybe some pictures, glued together inside a hard or soft folder with a pretty picture on the front? Something to be looked at, maybe read, and then tossed aside?
Or is it part of a treasured collection of printed pages, lovingly enclosed between crafted covers? Is it looked at and read with enjoyment, then carefully put on a shelf to be looked again and again?
If you are a booklover who answers yes to even part of the second paragraph, then I guess you have difficulty in disposing of any books. You probably have more piles of books that you have read and enjoyed so much that you plan to read them again. You most likely have piles of books that you are going to read one day because they look so good. You almost certainly have at least one book near you that you read whenever you have the chance.
And that is how one starts to become a real book person. And if two of you live in the same house, and raise four children with the same habits, it's easy to get overrun with books. Ask me, I know from experience.
The surplus books have to go. But you just cannot send to recycling, because that's a wast of good books and someone else somehwere will enjoy them. Some go the thrift shops (charity shops in Great Britain). The problem in this solution is that thrift shops sell other peoples' books and you are unlikely to walk out again empty handed.
Eventually you know that you are going to have to make a determined effort to dispose of some of them, so you try a garage sale (or boot fair in Great Britain), then a book fair, then another. Now, with luck, you are recouping some of the money spent on your precious books - which funds more.
But you also discover that there are other people who are the same as you, and some of them are looking for special books. Sometimes you have what someone has been searching for. That's where the internet comes into its own. You can advertise your books and reach a wider audience of book lovers.
Perhaps as you have read this and further articles and anecdotes about books, you will find something you have been looking for, or which takes your fancy. Oh yes, and postcards, ephemera and postage stamps will get a mention to. Life isn't simple in our house and never has been!