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I'm not certain my generation has it either, actually. I think for most people, it's the idea they seize on to justify their phobia of change. If it was such a big deal, you'd see bookstores selling spray cans of "old book smell" just like you can buy "new car smell", and sales of fancy leatherbound, slipcased books would be a whole lot higher than they actually are. Most people aren't very good at examining their own thinking. They know this new/different/scary e-reader makes them uncomfortable -- "it's not what I'm used to!" is a huge roadblock for a lot of people -- so their mind fills in some kind of justification to explain it.
As I posted in another thread a month or two back, I'm a multi-sensory sort of person. I really am someone who likes the sight of rows of books on my shelves, the feel of them in my hand, the smell of new ink or old mildew, the rustle of the pages, etc. But I've transferred that to my ebook reader ... my "reading is coming!" cues are the ritual of peeling off the stretchy cover cover, opening the closing tab of the case, the smell of the leather, the feel of the power switch under my fingertip, the tiny click of the page-turn button, and so on. I like ... I depend on ... all the sensations associated with reading, or with anything else enjoyable. But there's no reason why one specific set of sensations -- those associated with reading a pbook, for instance -- are necessarily better than another set -- reading an ebook. I can enjoy them both.
I'm sort of a temporal contradiction. I write computer programming notes with a fountain pen. I read Plato on a Sony Reader. I load my MP3 player with 75-year-old radio shows. On chilly days, I wear a medieval-style cloak over my T-shirt and jeans. I see absolutely no conflict between my love of physical books and my love of electronic books. If anything, having my 505 means I can restrict my dead-trees book collection to those books that have real meaning for me in their physical form, and use the 505 for the cheap, often used, paperbacks that otherwise threaten to overwhelm them (and me, and my shelves, and my cat...).
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