Book snobbery

I love reading, so surely it goes to follow that I would love the new Kindle (other e-readers are available), right?

Wrong, actually.  I'm being unfair here, because I've never actually tried one, but for me it just feels alien to talk about technology and books in the same breath.  I've spoken to people about their Kindles and their iPads and they love them, and I can see why - lugging a hardback around with you can be a pain in more ways than one, and when you're going on holiday it must be great to take a Kindle with your entire bookshelf loaded onto it instead of going through your bookshelves trying to decide what you think will make a good read and will still give you enough baggage room for your essentials, like clothes.

But it's the whole "going through the bookshelves" thing that I love, I'm afraid.  I have two giant bookshelves at home, both of them hopelessly cluttered with books I've read, books I'm planning to read again, books I hated but still won't get rid of (I don't get rid of ANYTHING) and books just waiting to be read.  I love finishing a book and then staring through those hopelessly cluttered shelves, searching for the next amazing read, taking a book out and examining it in detail before putting it back and moving on to the next (this process can go on a bit).  I just can't see myself deriving the same amount of pleasure by flicking through a slick, organised 'virtual' bookshelf which, when downloaded, looks exactly the same as every other book.  Where's the individuality in that?  You might say that that is in the writing itself, and you'd be right in lots of ways, but for me every book has an individual personality, starting with the size and the cover and moving on to the typeface and the setting out of each chapter.  I have often chosen a book in Waterstone's or WHSmith or a charity shop just on the strength of the cover or the way the title has been scrawled all over the front of it.  Could I do that if I had a Kindle or an iPad?  Possibly, but it would be less fun, choosing it from a screen.

I also hate the way a Kindle allows you to hide what you're reading.  I love seeing what other people are reading; on some rare but wonderful occasions it has facilitated a new purchase or even a chat with a stranger (the last of such random chats was about 'One Day', a book the world loved and I absolutely hated - I was so desperate to find a kindred spirit that I badgered everybody I saw reading it, but that's another story!)  There is also, for me, nothing more attractive than a good-looking man sitting on a train engrossed in a really good novel (I'm not talking Harry Potter or Dan Brown here, snob that I am).

I suppose I just have to hope that real books will never go out of fashion, or that if they do, there will still be dimly-lit, backstreet places you can go to get them.

(and what happens if you drop a Kindle in the bath?!)