Yes, books are worth it, physical books especially.
1. The automated information control that occurs online today, means that things are there one day, gone the next. This happens accross the information continuum.
2. The Pareto principle: 20% of things provide 80% of the value. Online, where new content can be created for nearly free, good information about anything can be hard to find, drowned in a sea of advertisement and distraction. In a physical bookstore or library, the cost of printing and stocking means that only things that are worth printing, are kept around.
3. Inheritance of relevancy: I enjoy getting my books from the used bookstores, because time after time I pick up some volume on history that someone has written incredible things in the margins! Of course, we have comment sections and such online, but the Pareto principle applies again here.
4. Impression and discernment of value: You can tell just from looking at the design of a book, what the intended audience is. If the authors name is bigger than the title, for example, that tells you a whole lot. If like me, you look for more uncommon, less known things, you learn to disregard anything with flashy marketing or a bestseller claim. Head straight for the plain and boring: the value is what gets it sold, whats written inside.
5. Obscure, out-of-print, actually supressed and allegedly supressed works. This goes hand in hand with number 1: Its much harder to round up 10,000 copies of a book, than to add the metadata to an automatic blacklist. Everything from textbooks, to historical autobiographies, to contemporary primary source reporting: the beast devours it all. Put it on your shelf, then it cannot be deleted.
