There are so many ways to consume media. Magazines, newsletter, podcasts, and my favorite, books. Yet there’s something just so satisfying about picking up a book. You can hold it in your hands, breathing in that smell of paper and ink. Books often remind me of rainy days, where I curl up with a mug of cocoa and a good book, and spend a couple of hours in another world entirely. 

I have tried reading e-books; using my Mom’s Kindle to search for my favorites. I really want to like digital reading, as my hurting wallet and the lack of bookstores around my house doesn’t permit me to read as many physical books as I would like; yet I find that e-books can be so much harder to get invested in. 

While yes, e-books are mechanically the same as physical books, I find that when reading paper copies, there are so many little things that make reading  much more enjoyable. 

When picking up a novel, I can appreciate the cover, turning its glossy face over in the light, making its embellishments shine in the sun. 

Some hard-cover books have dust jackets, which are usually very interesting to look at; the true prize however, is under the dust jacket, where against a matte background authors usually hide elegant metallic lettering or simple images, also in silver or gold paint. 

There are no such pleasant surprises when you pick up a Kindle. What you see is what you get, and while that may seem appealing to some, I find that the covers on the kindle are very boring; a flat black and white image with little interest to it. 

We’ve all heard the phrase, don’t judge a book by its cover. While covers should not be the mechanism by which you decide if the book is worth reading or not, without them, reading feels so much less artistic. 

I have so many happy memories of sitting in my room, with only a good book and my imagination. Ever since I was little, I’ve loved the feeling of  books in my hands, loved collecting them, and displaying them on my shelf, always there to go back to if ever I am bored. 

You cannot collect e-Books. Sure, you can curate a selection, but there is no physical, readily available reminder of them that you can put on a shelf. 

Additionally, I find that when reading physical books, it’s easier to find your place, in the story, and in the physical book itself. 

If I miss a part, I can’t remember a character’s name or something similar, I can usually skim back to the place where the character was introduced. 

When reading an ebook, no way am I going to press the back button thousands of times  to find and re-read a character’s backstory. Sure, there’s a little 10%, 20%, 25% in the bottom corner, but that doesn’t really give me a sense of where I am in the story. 

Reading a book through a screen, I often imagine I can feel that pane of glass between myself and the characters, keeping me from being drawn into the story, the way I am with physical books. 

There are so many little tiny things that make reading physical books so much more enjoyable. I am not against anyone who prefers e-books, I can see why someone would like the convenience of them. Personally though, I like to curl up in my bed with a new book, wrapped in my blanket, and turn one page, and then the next, until either I’ve run out of pages to turn, or my eyelids have gotten too heavy to continue, drifting off into sleep.