When you’re getting books do you prefer to get new ones or secondhand ones?
I really enjoy the “hunt” for used editions of books that I want, and browsing through stacks in used bookstores is fun and neat way to discover books that I might not ever run across otherwise! But I’m kind of picky about the condition of books I buy, so sometimes I just go the easy route and pick up a new copy. Or if it’s a book I don’t want to wait to read I’ll snag a new one!
I generally prefer older books, with the exception of brittle paperbacks. Seems like a lot of cheap paperbacks from the 50s/60s/70s used paper that aged very badly.
That’s probably just due to the production processes that they used back then. Nowadays we’re much more aware of things like making paper acid-free, and even our cheap mass-market paperbacks use better quality paper than books from back then.