E-reading isn’t reading.......

[TreasonousBastard]

3. Well, I've been reading books for over 60 years, so of course...

old habits die hard and books are old friends I hate to lose. My father taught me to read with Golden Books, so it's a long relationship that I hate to think is over.

But, writing a letter, folding it, and the taste of the glue on the stamp and envelope flap are kind of fond memories, too, but who does that any more? And who really likes dealing with folding a newspaper as you read it, even though most of them have that new ink that doesn't end up on your fingers?

Some books, like the 600 page autobiography of Mark Twain, are really pain to read-- heavy, fat, and it's tough to find a comfortable position to hold them. Fuhgeddabout reading it in bed. Much better on my Nook. Others take up a lot of space I don't have now-- the complete works of Dickens and all the Oz books. A lot of stuff, like St. Augustine's, is in the public domain and I can download it for free and store it in a tiny corner of of a microchip. And I don't have to deal with folding the NY Times, even though I can no longer drool at the lingerie ads in the Sunday magazine. The Times, btw, now costs 20 bucks a month rather than 20 bucks a week.

And fewer trees are killed-- a small side benefit.

Yeah, even though it's tougher to write in the margins, I'll keep my Nook and the 235 books I may never finish in its chip.