My house is littered with them…paperbacks, hardbacks…each one a treasure that I’ve read, enjoyed, read again…and, for some, again and again and again.  I love their tattered covers and weakened spines.  I love their dog eared pages and sometimes find a stain from my coffee or a crumb hidden between the pages.  They may have begun as pristine pages with a nice shiny cover but by the time I’ve invested days into reading them, my heart into the characters, my mind into the plot, and tucked them into purses and bags and laid them open face down on counters, they wear the signs of use.  They are my Velveteen Rabbits, each one made real by being loved.    

My Kindle, though convenient to lug around hundreds of books at a time, doesn’t have the appeal of holding the one book you’re currently reading and making that tangible connection to the printed page.  It’s almost like a connection to the characters within the book, and even to the author.  I can “feel” them better when I’m holding a book.  

And a bookstore?  Be it a new or used shop, I get a little zing of excitement when I have the time to browse, touch, open and read a few lines, check out the back cover, see if the title jumps out at me, discover more books by authors I’ve read and like or new authors I want to read, and enjoy the anticipation of discovery that comes from walking inside a bookstore and knowing that within each of these books is a carefully constructed, beginning, middle, and end, escape.  It may be a funny escape or introspective escape or even a trip down Cupid Lane or imaginary worlds, but whichever it is, I can go there by grasping the pages and opening that book and letting my eyes and mind hitch me to the magic carpet of that book.   The Kindle is flip, scroll, buy…and convenient but just doesn’t have the same appeal or sensation.

eBooks may be the way of the future, but the book hoarder that I am, I’ll continue to rummage used book racks and garage sales, I’ll continue to schlep into bookstores with New Release tables and, sometimes, authors who autograph their works/gifts.  It’s books for me, because without them, reading a good book just doesn’t seem real.