Every time my arm had brushed the stack of books, some of the old binding had flaked off on my shirt. It turns out that that was just the tip of an iceberg. Books made in the last 200 years are especially cursed with short lifetimes. We see why when we look at ancient paper. Papyrus, from which we take the word paper, was made from reed fibers.
Parchment is by far the most durable writing material that ever found common use.
Linen-based paper was a poor man's substitute for parchment. It's made by reducing linen rags to a fiber slurry. When the slurry's drained over a fine mesh, the fibers reform themselves into a sheet of superb paper. Real linen paper is a lot cheaper than parchment, but it's still very costly by today's standards. Gutenberg printed some Bibles on parchment, but most were less expensive ones, printed on linen paper.