You Should Only Read E-Books

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Splurge your savings on a small electronic gadget that can be filled with every book of your choice.

Dress it in a jacket, engrave it and cherish it with your life.

Pull it out in the train and in the lines and in the bedroom and glide your fingers onto the screen, swiping the pages one by one.

Smirk at the jokes and frown at the sorrow when you succumb to the monotonous lines all written in the same black ink.

Turn it on and off and on again at your whim and fancy and be devastated when the power runs dry and every book dies along with it.

Evoke the envy of your friends when you whip it out with ease and rejoice in the privilege of not having to carry another heavy book again.

Let your anonymity be held in high regard as no one will ever have the chance to tilt sideways and have a fleeting glance at the cover of the precious book you are holding.

Demolish your little bookshelf and replace it with a nightstand to hold your single device while you drift in slumber.

Revel in the excitement of deleting your old books and with it every single memory you shared, all to make room for the new.

Do not bother to enter the sanctity of an old bookstore or a library.

Just pass it straight because for God’s sakes who would want to read printed books?

To collect them in all their shapes and sizes and colors and book covers.

Who would want to see the pages dusty and the binders bent and twisted, reminiscent of the times you’ve read and re-read your favorite story?

Who would want the stains on the pages and the little ears where you’ve marked your spot as you gently lay your book to rest?

Always read electronic books.

Do it I say because you do not want that unmistakable smell of a new book or a suffocating nostalgia of an old.

Be gone with those dusty bookshelves that can tell a stranger exactly who you are without even a single word.

No one wants to pass down their childhood books to their children and grandchildren and their children’s grandchildren.

Caress your single device and know that it will always be smooth and gentle instead of rough and rugged after years have passed.

You should only read E-books because to feel your fingers trace gently and slowly then all at once across the words and between the pages is to lose yourself completely and un-regretfully in a world with possibilities you have never imagined.

To read a printed book is to know that you can cry your heart out and soak the pages instead of worrying if your tears will destroy every other book in your electronic library.

To read a printed book is to know that there is an infinite immortality to its pages and no amount of digital restraint will tell you differently.

Own only e-books and throw away your printed books.

Do it because having printed books would mean that you will own a book, truly own a book, to give it life when it has unknowingly given you so much more, to make it a part of yourself and you a part of it.

Give up on printed books with their memories and their memoirs, their collectibles and their collections.

Give up your printed books so you will never be reminded of how exquisite and beautiful a real live book actually is.

Give up on printed books because goddamn, it’s not worth it.