Paper or Plastic?

I am sometimes a little slow to adopt new technological advances, but I eventually adopt them all -- or most of them. What I refuse to do, however, is start reading books electronically, rather than using the tried-and-true method of a book made from paper. I have tried electronic books -- I love the idea of a computer pad that you can carry around loaded with thousands of stories -- but I like an old-fashioned paper copy better.

A real book has a certain heft to it, a certain quality, a certain smell that you never get with a plastic reader. Sure, carrying around a thousand actual books is not as convenient as carrying around one electronic reader, but that's okay.

How much fun will it be, in the not-too-distant future, to walk into a used book store and thumb through previously owned electronic copies of books? Where will be that musty smell? or the excitement of walking down aisle upon aisle with my head cocked to the side to read the titles on spines of old volumes? or the thrill of seeing neat graphics of books from the 1920s? or the surprise when you open the pages and discover someone had used an old photograph as a bookmark and wonder who was the person pictured?

Gone. It will all be gone.

Aside from the romantic nostalgia of good old musty books, one thing that will never happen is the store from which I bought the book sneaking around when my back is turned and stealing the book away from me. No, once you purchase a paper book it is yours until you give it to someone else.

What's this? You have never heard of a company stealing an electronic copy of a book? Then clearly you have not heard about the usually wonderful company called Amazon -- with their (I presume) passably acceptable electronic book reader -- and how they are currently being sued for stealing copies of books they had sold to unsuspecting customers. That's right. You buy an electronic book from them and, whenever they damn well please, they can steal it back from you without so much as a "How's your father?".

It seems the good folks at Amazon sold a bunch of people copies of some books, then decided there was some problem with the copyright to those books, so they removed the books from the electronic readers without any notice whatsoever.

If someone comes into my house and steals a book from my shelf, that's called theft; if Amazon does it, that's called the way they do business. I call it bullshit.

You can read more about Amazon's shitty actions here.