Books

The doors swung open, creaking creepily, and there I was. The smell was overwhelming; an incredible medley of the smell of paper, dust and ink. Rows, shelves, spread all over the place, as far as you could see. Signs indicating where specific genres are placed, and that feeling, that feeling you get when you see the sign you're looking for, the genre you read all the time and start walking towards it, is nonexchangeable. Then you come across the shelves and shelves of the thing you're looking for, so many of them that you don't know where to begin. You feel happy and excited to go through all of them. You pick one that catches your eye, flip to the back, glance, then flutter the pages, and the smell hits you again, and you know you have to buy that. You are anxious to get home and start it, bend the cover neatly for the first time, crease the spine, "en premier", read the opening paragraph and get introduced to the world that lies beyond the neatly designed cover. And the moment you open the cover, pass through the copyrights, the short intro by the editor, sometimes, the table of contents, and reach the first line, read it, and comprehend it, you have been introduced into a whole, new world. A make-believe one, maybe, but just as real as the life you're living when you drop down the book.

The actions, feelings and senses I described above can be related to one, single object: books.

Books can never be replaced, not by "e-books", not by Kindles, not by PDF's, now by "audio books". They have their own special place in our hearts, well, at least in mine, and are probably one of the greatest inventions of man kind.

It was a big mistake of mine to download Stephen King's novel, It, which is nearly 10 cm thick in paperback, to read it on the Kindle. Sure, you can easily find the definition of a word, don't need to keep a bookmark, and don't need to haul the brick-like book around with you, but these advantages of the Kindle do not make up for the real-deal; paperback books.

Seeing the percentage you've read at the bottom of the screen of the Kindle is not the same as turning the book sideways and flipping the pages to see how long you've got to go.

Just shutting down the Kindle without marking your place is not the same as putting your "bookmark"- very seldom a real bookmark though, most commonly a receipt from a store, a note paper with numbers scribbled onto it, numbers which have now lost their meaning to you, maybe, if you come across one, a Post-It note, or just the ripped corner of a piece of paper-and skimming through the next couple of pages to see where the chapter ends.

Most importantly, holding the Kindle in your hand, so light and thin, is not the same as holding a paperback book, with the shadows of the pages on the left cast upon the pages on the right.

Electronic devices have replaced many everyday objects in our lives today, from scales to stock markets, but there is one thing they will never be able to replace: real, paperback or hardcover books which you can flip through the pages, actually turn the pages, feel them, and be caressed by the soft wind they generate and be mesmerized by their smell which takes you back down "memory-lane".