Books going the way of music?

This is an interesting read about the implications of Amazon.com's Kindle and other digital book readers. (Simply put, the Kindle is to books and magazines as the iPod is to music.)

I immediately rejected the very notion as nonsense. Afterall, part of the joy of reading books is in flipping the pages, feeling the covers, and even smelling the newness (or oldness) of the paper. The physical, tactile aspect of reading is important and necessary. Reading from an electronic pad would rob the other senses of sharing in the experience. Why, it'd be like eating without being able to see or smell the food!

But it was not too many years ago when I had similar feelings about music. What about the CD art and liner notes? Won't the MP3 revolution banish the "album" to the past? I take pride in my giant 300-capacity CD stand and all of the treasures it holds. And its fun flipping through the CDs to find just right music for the occasion.

Ultimately, of course--and with surprisingly little resistance--all of those concerns gave way to the lifestyle-changing convenience offered by my iPod. I now have my entire music collection at home, at work, on the bus, at the gym, in the car, in bed, in the bathroom, on vacation. MP3s are cheaper, easier to find, faster to obtain, and less environmentally wasteful than CDs ever were or could be. iTunes even offers a jukebox-style interface for those of us who love to "flip" through our music collection. And really, did you ever look at the liner notes more than once? No, you didn't. And be honest: you don't miss them at all.

So here I sit, looking around my living room... at the three overflowing bookcases (one of which used to be my CD stand)... at all the space they take up and all the trees that died in order to make me feel really intelligent (I've only read about 10% of the books I have on display)... at all the dust that blankets the uneven rows of books. And I think about how many times I've gone on vacation and found myself wishing I'd brought along that new sci fi novel instead of this FDR biography. And all the heavy boxes full of books that I've been lugging around with me in life, the strained back muscles and the crushed toes.

And suddenly it seems an awfully neat idea to have my entire library at my fingertips, on a smooth, shiny little electronic device. I'm sure there will be leather covers we'll be able to slip our Kindles into. Who knows, maybe they could even infuse them with a slight musky aroma.

And think of all the stuff I could buy to take the place of those monstrous book shelves!