I never thought I would switch to ebooks. I, too, loved paper books since early childhood. I remember I was very annoyed, because Amazon pushed their Kindle books at me every time I went there to shop for books. Those were not
real books!
But I had to buy an e-reader when I ran out of room to store my paper books (I had about a thousand by the time). No one among my friends and family reads fiction in English, so I could not even give my books away. And of course paper books are expensive where I live, shipping costs, custom fees and all that.
So I bought a basic kindle in 2011. To my surprise I found I enjoyed reading on it, even more so than I enjoyed paper books. I've never looked back since then.
You don't have to switch to e-books only because others have done so. But you could try out one of the cheaper readers (certainly e-ink, not a tablet, if you want paper-like experience). Perhaps you'll like it!