Yes and they're big, heavy, annoying to keep open, have text that is too small or too large, they take up a lot of space, they're easy to damage, you can't back them up at all, you can't highlight or make notes impermanently, you can't search, and lighting them up in the night without disturbing your partner is harder. You can't sit in bed, finish one book, then decide you really liked it and want to start the sequel right now and have it purchased and ready in 2 minutes. You can't take your whole bookcase on holiday with you.
But yes, you can give them to people when you're done.
Not that I dislike physical books, but there are plenty more reasons than just being able to hand the book to someone else. In any case, my experiences with sharing have been less than ideal.
The environmental impact or books is miniscule/completely insignificant compared to the output of the military industrial complex on a daily basis. What are you doing to help bring that down?
That’s a whataboutism. I’m not a fan of the military industrial complex either.
The environmental impact of delivering a book digitally is negligible vs shipping all the materials to a printer, the finished book to a store, getting the customer to the store then back home.
And I say this as someone who’s a fan of printing and its history. I mean, just look at my username.
I still read tangible real books. They don't need backing up and you can give them to people when you're done.