I think that’s mostly survivorship bias. The vast majority of books weren’t worth keeping so few survive. They were mostly religious texts, reprints of Greek an

I think that’s mostly survivorship bias. The vast majority of books weren’t worth keeping so few survive. They were mostly religious texts, reprints of Greek and Roman classics and the equivalent of modern cheap fiction paperbacks, like a bunch of fantasy novels about Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable. They weren’t that expensive because they didn’t have anything beyond black and white print and a simple binding. The really expensive books were hand colored. Most of the books that survive from that era are family bibles because they were the books treasured and passed down by families, rather than thrown away after reading. The book in TFA was in essence a historical reference so it makes sense he would add notes. These were literally the only places where that kind of knowledge would be stored