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There's something I just have to say, and it might make me look like a dinosaur, but here goes:

I really, really prefer "traditional" books to e-Readers.

Why? Because of so many reasons! I like the look and feel of books, the feel of covers, the imaginative use of fonts, the feeling of turning the page - all of which you cannot get with an e-Reader. But even more than that - I like the fact that, when you're reading a book and you get tired, you can simply slot a bookmark in and get back to it later. (You can probably do that with e-Readers too, but it's just not the same). More than anything, books - GOOD books - depend on characters, plot, dialogue and narrative. A combination of memorable characters, cracking dialogue and an exciting narrative can really drive a book and fire your imagination. This is why I like talking books too. A skilled voice actor can easily and memorably portray many scenes and many characters; when the talking book is actually a dramatisation (e.g. an adaptation of the book as a radio series, with music and sound effects and so on), so much the better! But squinting at a tiny LCD screen is just not the same.

The only way in which an e-Reader might be superior to a book is size. It's simply more convenient to carry an e-Reader on the train or somewhere where you don't have a lot of room. And, all right, if you have to carry out repairs or some-such in an environment where you don't have a lot of room (e.g. inside a metal tube?) and you need to look up how to do it, an e-Reader could help. But otherwise? If you're like me, and you like reading to relax or unwind, or to get something that "grabs" you, you just can't beat a book.

So what's your opinion, hmm?

My utter respect goes out to people who read books. Went to visit my blind friend on the third. I read a lot to her: Gogol's The Nose, three stories by Bordewijk and a large part of a chapter by Oliver Sacks on a man who got to see after 45 years of blindness. My throat still hurts three days later.
I love bookshelves. One of my few material desires in life is owning a library. Like these ones. http://bookshelfporn.com/ Who could possibly want an e-reader? It looks miserable on a bookshelf, you can't use it as a guitar stand (which I did with a poorly translated copy of War & Peace), or flip through it and smell the wonderful scent of old paper. I have a first edition version of my favourite book. There's nothing digital that could beat it. Back in the day I had 1500 books on a CD-rom called World Library CD-roms. I wished I had it at times I needed the Quran or the Bible, but it was actually a very unpleasant read, all these notepad files, having to scroll all the time.

I'm the proud possessor of houndreds of beautiful books, including some fine editions, especially of Conan Doyle's works, and also the incredibly satisfied owner of an Amazon Kindle.

You really mustn't see the two media as competitors. E-readers won't replace books. Not ever. And indeed the material feeling of a book in your hand is unique. I would never switch all the dear books I have for digital copies of them. Never. Still, there are advantages. Many of them, actually.

1. The price. Kindle books are usually about half the price of the correspondent hard copy.
2. The space. The Kindle is light and slim and it contains up to 1400 books. This means I can carry a bookshelf with me wherever I go.
3. The comfort. You just finished a spell-binding novel and want to read the sequel? Connect to the Kindle wi-fi and download it. It takes about five seconds.
4. The usefulness. Stumbled on a word you don't know? The Kindle built-in dictionaries will find the definition for you. This may look like a small thing, but for me - a non native English speaker who nonetheless read many, many, many books in English - is a priceless feature.

Moreover, with a Kindle you have the possibility to try for free a sample chapter of the book you're interested in, so that you can decide if it's really your cup of tea. Not every bookshop allows the customer to flip through the books and this is a very neat possibility, don't you agree?

All in all, I really adore my books. And I also adore the Kindle. They are just two different but complementary ways of reading.

I thought this topic was somewhere on here already...

EDIT: Nevermind. It was on my own forum. A "war" of opinions indeed get unleashed.

I am currently dumping most of my reference books. What you can find online is easier find specific information. I have no intentions of dumping my fiction to replace it with some "e" form. Still, the ease of travel has a lot going for the likes of a pad/Kindle.

I prefer real books to e-readers, but I have to say that using e-books would be handy in academic environments. Instead of having a ton of books to carry around in high school or pay astronomical fees for large textbooks you'll never use after certain university classes, having all of your books stored in one small, lightweight device would be useful.

[rant]
That's true DPX. Official college text readers can get very expensive, and due to legislation new books are also often very expensive out here. I've had to pay over 200 dollars just on reading material for subjects many more times than once.
Because making an "official" reader means that, whenever non-original copyrighted texts are used, the university needs to pay royalties for using them, several teachers have the policy to not make one altogether: they just send 50+ students to a stack of copied paper hidden in the library. Unless some of the students jump up to organize a clandestine reader, that usually leads to mayhem.

So: some teachers are clever enough to put them on the official university blackboard as PDFs.
And then I go to download them and get nothing but an enormous stack of white papers because of Vista.
[/rant]

I am a voracious reader. I read 3-4 books a week, every week, since I was in grammar school. I have 6 bookcases full and a cellar full of books packed away in storage boxes. There is very little room in my 5 room house for any more. Last June I bought a Barnes and Noble Nook e-reader. I like it but it's just not the same as a paper book. The e-reader doesn't have the same magic that a real book does. One good thing about it though...you can increase the font size...I don't need my glasses when reading in bed.
I agree with everything Andrea said.

After my mother died, my brother and I found an old newspaper clipping in her personal papers. It was the poem found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strickland_Gillilan.
My Mother read to us, her mother read to her. Both of them read to my brother and I. My brother and I both read to my nephew when he was little.

Anyhoo, I prefer traditional books but of necessity have gone over to the darkside.