The love of holding a real book.

I confess. I’m a book nerd. I still love old-fashioned hold-in-my-hand books.

With paper pages, bindings, covers, and inside flaps. I love how a book feels in my hand, how it smells, how smooth the pages feel.

I love opening a new book for the first time. Entering its world and dipping my toes in its wonder and promise. Using a bookmark to hold my place or dog-earing a page if I feel I’ll be coming back to a section again and again.

I like giving other people books and writing a dedication in them.

So no, I’m not an e-reader by first choice. I don’t Kindle. I don’t Nook. It just feels at bit cold and impersonal to me. I know there are good reasons to go electronic: e-books are easier for travel, lighter to carry, don’t take up space on a shelf, and so on. Great. Enjoy.

I happen to like the whole tactile relationship I have with a book. For me, the weight of the paper, width of the page, choice of font, and placement of photos or illustrations is part of the author’s message. After all, some suffering fool agonized over these words for possibly years. I think reading it merits more action than a few clicks.

Yes, I’m a baby boomer, so maybe having Dick and Jane as my first literary introduction has something to do with it. But actually I’ve met others who love books and they’re quite young…they’re not ready to go completely touchscreen yet.

Thank heavens.

I can’t even imagine an elementary classroom with children asked to pull out their readers and then the clicking begins.

I cherish the books I loved as a child, and still have many of them. The Mother West Wind Stories by Thornton W. Burgess. Raggedy Ann, Charlotte’s Web, and Alice in Wonderland. Countless books about horses and animals. Poetry and inspiration. Some have inscriptions from my mother. Others bring back memories of summer afternoons made even more pleasant by wonderful stories. I sincerely hope future generations can have these experiences. Because I just think some books are meant to be just that…books.

Case in point. I have a copy of Cosmigraphics by Michael Benson, a wonderful coffee-table book that looks at the discovery of the universe through breathtaking maps, illustrations, paintings, and more that span 1,000 years. The images are amazing and command a large page. It’s a thrill to leaf through. I don’t think I’d get the same effect on a small screen.

But alas, things have changed, and for many authors, being published online is an opportunity to get their work out there to new audiences. I appreciate that, and applaud anyone who’s published a book in any form. But it just seems a it too easy, when so many great writers struggle and agonize for years just to get the attention of an agent, much less a publisher. (Like when we were all told that the Evelyn Wood method of speed-reading was so wonderful….and someone asked, “but what about the writer who spent days deciding between a comma or a period? Won’t that get missed in a supersonic reading speed?)

Still, I hope and pray that books stick around and independent book stores still are there for those of us who love getting lost in them. MacDonald Bookshop in Estes Park, Colorado. Collected Works in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe in Washington, D.C. Burke’s Bookstore in Memphis, Tennessee. To name a few.