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I grew up addicted to reading. I physically cannot pass by the book aisle at the grocery store without pausing to look and see what's new. Walking thru B&N or Borders is to me like a kid walking into a candy store. And libraries still have a feeling of a holy place. I love books! The cover art beckons to me, the smell of new books is just shy of an aphrodesiac, and cracking the binding of a new book for the first time is a feel as familiar to me as breathing. I've spent unholy amounts of money on books, even when I was a starving undergrad student lo those many years ago. Books fill a hunger in my soul the way food feeds my body.
I have a collection of rather rare books from a family collection, some dating back to the late 1800s and many bound in a fashion that would never be economically feasible today. Nothing can replace them; it's the physical book itself that has sentimental value rather than the contents. (Two of my Masonic books, for instance, I also own in reproduction trade paperback so I have the content available -- it's the fact that my greatgrandfather had the original volumes presented to him by his lodge with inscriptions written in longhand inside the cover and that his notations are liberally sprinked across the heavy paper which make those books so valuable to me.)
There will always be a place in my heart for pbooks, but discovering MobiPocket last year for my smartphone and now my Kindle 3 have completely changed my reading style. Instead of keeping 5 or 6 paperbacks and a couple of medical journals in strategic places (briefcase, desk at work, car console, bedside nightstand, and master bathroom) I can keep 'em all on my Kindle. And now that I have the Kindle and my smartphone I really don't have the need to keep a handful of books open simultaneously.
Even better, the missus doesn't make pointed remarks each time I come home with a stack of mass paperbacks to feed my addiction. With a bit of luck she'll never realize just how many ebooks I'm buying.
I'm a year or so into ebooks now, and since aquiring my Kindle 3 a few weeks ago I've purchased <actual number redacted in case the missus reads over my shoulder> ebooks from Amazon. It's strange, however, making myself not buy pbooks now but to go home emptyhanded and buy the ebook(s) instead.
Oh -- the good folks at my local used book emporium sent us a sympathy card the other day, assuming that I must have met with a chronic illness or tragic accident. I've not had the heart to tell those good folks I no longer have an armful of books to trade.
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