Why I Hope Real Books Never Die and They Won’t – Kevin DeYoung.
This past Tuesday, Feb.21, 2012, Kevin DeYoung had this serious and somewhat humorous post on the rise and fall of the “real” book. Citing his own experience with e-readers, he comes down on the side of the good ol’ traditional book. And I must say – surprise! – that I am in almost complete agreement. I am still reading on my Kindle nearly daily, and find it convenient and useful for some types of reading that I do – typically end of the day when I do my “brain-rinse” reading.And I have started taking it to church, where I can use multiple versions for comparison, follow a NT passage in Greek, and have all the Heidelberg Catechism proof texts handy in one place. So, I am not ready by any means to abandon the screen for reading. But, when I really want to read? Then I crack open a real book!
Anyway, here are some of this thoughts – click on the link above to read the rest. O, and pay attention to his chair picture – a mini-library in itself! I want one of those 
Perhaps I am a wishful thinking bibliophile, but I just don’t think the physical book is going the way of the dodo bird. No doubt, many scholars and students will house parts of their reference libraries on an electronic device. Some frequent flyers will stick books on their tablets instead of in their brief cases. And some techno-geeks will conclude that everything is better on an Apple product. I’m sure ereaders will make inroads. They serve a useful purpose. But only to a point.
Old books are like old friends. They love to be revisited. They stick around to give advice. They remind you of days gone by. Books, like friends, hang around.
And they prefer not to be invisible.
I can’t tell you how many often I sit at my desk, push back my seat, and allow my eyes to drift around the room full of bookshelves. I’m not procrastinating, not exactly. I’m scanning the room to see my friends. Their covers jog my memories. They remind me of what I learned once. More than that, they remind me of my life–where I was when I first read Lloyd-Jones on the couch, how I knelt by the bed with tears when I read Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, how my life was so different 15 years ago when I read my dad’s copy of the Institutes as a college student. If all my books disappeared on to a microchip I might have less to lug around and I might be able to search my notes more easily, but I’d lose memory; I’d lose history; I’d lose a little bit of myself.
With Justin Taylor I say, “Amen”.
