After my father died, I was left in an empty house full of books. Both of my parents were readers with a healthy dose of pack-rat thrown in, so for all the general detritus of their lives, there was a corresponding amount of books.

Boxes and boxes of books.

Destitute, jobless, and homeless (I had to let the house fall into foreclosure as I could not afford to keep it), I had no choice but to go through that massive collection and whittle it down to items sentimental (father’s book on knots, mothers Riverside Shakespeare), valuable, or personally significant (my Camus collection—cheap paperbacks, but nothing I was willing to live without).

I got an apartment and life went on, but I did not forget that lesson. As I moved (and moved, and moved again) the book collection distilled down from fifteen boxes to ten boxes to five. I eventually even donated my Encyclopedia Britannica to Goodwill, a move that would have horrified my parents to their long-dead bones, because I simply had no room for it. (Also? If you have never actually lifted and carried an encyclopedia set, then you simply do not know the definition of “heavy.” Refrigerators weigh less.)

After all that, I purposefully eschewed buying books. Even when I had room for more, I knew I would be moving again soon so I held off. In all seriousness, I think there was decade where I bought about two books a year. It was heartbreaking but at least I had the public library.

This is why I am a bibliophile with a passion for the printed book who has absolutely no sympathy for those who weep at the rise of ebooks, those who insist that digital versions of their favorite books are simply inferior and will never replace “the real thing.” Well DUH, of course they won’t. No shit.

That doesn’t nullify the huge advantage ebooks have. In my case, since buying my Nookoid, I’ve purchased more books in the past two months than I have in the past two years. That counts for something.

I agree that ereaders and ebooks are not the solution to all problems in the publishing industry, and I will always harbor my deep love for the printed object, but this is no less true: my ereader has changed my life, and by “changed” I mean “improved.”

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