Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

E-book technology is getting better, more accessible and more affordable with each new application and iteration. It's portable. You don't have to cart along hardbacks on vacation. You have the best seller of your choice at your fingertips. E-readers open up a whole new way to read and likely introduce reading to a new audience. This is all good, but only to an extent.

I worry that E-books will replace real books and that would be a serious loss. Reading is a ritual. And the book, itself, is what matters most. I appreciate its weight in my hands. I love the anticipation of opening the cover and losing myself in a story. I resist the urge to flip to the last chapter to make sure it all turns out in the end. It's the act of reading the physical object that makes it special. I just can't picture curling up on the couch with my Kindle.

As a reader, I am curious about what others read. Books offer a glimpse of who we are. A glance at my coffee table or bookshelves will tell you a lot about me and what I care about. You'll only get a fragment of who I am from a peek at my E-reader.

We share books with our friends. We pass the books we loved as kids to our own children. We lug our books with us from move to move, and don't feel we are fully home until our books are back on their shelves. Can an E-reader capture that sense of home?

By all means, bring on the technology. Give us new ways - lots of ways - to consume information. But don't throw out the old to make way for the new. I prefer my next best seller the old-fashioned way.