I am an avid reader. Have been since I was a kid. The day I got my first library card ranks in my Top 20. I finish a book, I'm ready to start another one. Can't stand that interim bookless feeling.
There's something comforting about the feel of a book. Turning the pages. Placing the bookmark to monitor your progress. I can spend hours in a bookstore or library reading dust jacket blurbs, letting the pages fall open to random chapters, scanning the dialogue and analyzing the cover art.
No doubt -- I do indeed love the actual physical object known in the vernacular as a book. Okay, okay, I'm stalling. It's confession time: I am pondering buying an e-reader. There. I said it. I feel like a traitor, a heretic, a turncoat, a cheat, Don't I owe some loyalty to all those bookstores and libraries that have fed my habit all these years? Will I ever be able to look the librarian in the eye again. Will the bookseller somehow know that I'm going electronic? Perhaps I'll start wearing a giant "E" on my shirt to further ostracize myself from the good people who remain true to The Book.
Let me explain before you all pile on with reasons to loathe e-readers. I just finished a 900 page book. That's a few pounds of paper and I got an upper body workout just holding it every night. That's when I started to toy with the e-reader idea. If there are other 3-inch thick tomes in my reading future.....
I doubt that I could do it cold turkey. Cut off books altogether? Too extreme. What's next -- a world without chocolate? Besides it would take some time to wean me off of curling up with a good book. I just don't get the same glow over a plastic gadget made in China.
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