real books rule!

Real books rule!
I enjoy the smell of books: New ones that arrive in brown boxes with crisp covers; books I've had since I was small, when I used a purple magic marker to write a number on the side according to their rank on my shelf; I even like the old mildewy ones from long ago libraries where thousands of hands touched them, took them to their bathtubs and teatimes. I just got a book that smells exactly like Moorestown, New Jersey, 1987.
Nothing can really replace the feeling of finishing a great book, closing it and holding it in your hands while you remember all the characters and put them to bed on your shelf next to the others.
Of course, I have rid myself of everything several times now. Not much survived the great Purge of '97, when I had to liquidate everything to make rent. But that makes another point in favor of real books. In the lean times, can you take your used e-books to the store and sell them back? For that matter, how do you pass on a great book you've just finished to a friend, when it is just information on a screen?
The books I keep now are precious to me, like old friends I can go back to for support. It's reassuring just to see them there in a row. The shape of the shelf, that I built it myself, adds to the life of my room.
Still, Kindle and other e-books are probably here to stay. The i-Pod isn't going anywhere, and people will invent newer things, too, under the banner of Saving Space or consolidating informations. But even when they figure out how to make the e-book smell like the real thing, they won't be able to replace them.
I was reading about the Kindle, thinking about how much it reminds me of the Hitchhikers Guide. Not the book per se, but the actual guide in the book, the handheld encyclopedia of everything that Arthur Dent carries around and uses to acquaint himself with the universe. Douglas Adams called it, I guess: Who could have guessed in 1979 that we would actually have entire catologs of information available in a tiny portable container? All we need to do is slap the comforting label "Don't Panic" on the front and Adams' vision will be completely realized.
Several people have come into the bookstore now wondering if we sell E-books. Sorry, no.
Also, they have questions.
"Do you have this book," they hold up their Kindle and I see they are reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's Pulitzer prizewinning book 'Team of Rivals,' the story of Abraham Lincoln's slavery-abolishing cabinet.
"I just want to know where I am in this book, I can't tell on this thing," they say. When I fetch the 757-page tome, they do a double-take. "Whoa! I've got a ways to go."
So does the Kindle if it's going to make a run at my bookshelves.
Alfred