Here’s the question from Booking Through Thursday (Wednesday?):

  • Do you read e-Books?
  • If so, how? On your computer, or a PDA?
  • Or are you a paper purist? Why?

Here’s my answer:  No,  I don’t read e-books.  There are primarily two reasons for this.  One is practical.  The other is more…philosophical.  The first reason is that I sit at a computer all day reading and/or writing legal documents, and I have bad eyesight.  (Okay, maybe that’s two reasons, but there’s a definite cause-and-effect relationship.) 

The second reason is that I just love honest-to-God, printed-on-paper books.  I love feeling the heft of a book in my hands, the soft leather of an old book cover, or the texture of an embellished binding.    I love it that I can walk into a bookstore or a library, and the smell of the books will immediately lower my blood pressure.  I love how books look standing up on a bookshelf or lying on a coffee table or on a desk. I love it that someone wrote “Feb. 11, 1902″ and “Class of [19]03″ in the margins of my 1889 Berlitz First-year French primer.  The experience of reading for me has always been about more than just the text on the page, and having a real book is an important part of that experience.