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A book is a treasure, first and foremost, because of what is written in it. Curling up with a book is like being with an old friend. It doesn't matter whether it's a luxuriously leather-bound volume or a signed first edition or just an old paperback. But a book also has an atmosphere, something that clings to it and gives it a special value as an object, over and above the value of its contents.
That special value may be purely personal - the book you were given as a school prize, or the book you were reading when you first fell in love - or it may be a value that is shared by others - a copy of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, for example, signed by Carroll himself. The value may change from person to person - the book you just threw out might be the very book someone else has been looking for for years to complete a set. When I see the original edition of Winnie the Pooh, it brings back my childhood; it's a lovely book, but it costs thousands of pounds!
Some people want a set of leatherbound Dickens that will look nice on the shelves. Others want a first edition - to turn the very same pages that the very first readers of that book ever turned. If we just want to read the contents, we can go to a bookstore and buy the book in paperback, or borrow it from a library. But if we are interested in the atmosphere of a book, its history and its value as a cultural treasure, then we will become collectors.
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