I’m fully aware that who dares to be doubtfully critical about the future of so called e-books deserves to be treated like a kind of troglodyte.

I remember as a child to feel snobbishly sarcastic about the firm refusal of my great-grandmother to use the remote control for TV.
Even though we had told her how easier and more comfortable it would have been for her to change programs from her armchair, just pushing a bottom of the little harmless dark box, she kept on getting up and walk to the television set to change the channel manually.

It’s my turn now, I’m afraid, it means I’m definitely out of date, mercilessly elderly....
I’m the troglodyte now.

All the signals show clearly that the damned gimmick will be more than successful.
Amazon has announced that had sold more e-books, than reassuring, old fashioned paper books during Christmas period.
If I were more suspicious and distrustful than I really am, I’d might think that maybe this declaration is somehow related to the promotion of the new model of Kindle, the e-book reader produced by Amazon...but I’m not so twisted.

Don’t forget I’m the troglodyte.

The future will see the readers, if they keep on existing, downloading endless titles on a sophisticated electronically device and browsing virtual pages on an aseptic screen.

A whole library inside a pocket box...
Wonderful, isn’t it?
No endless shelves of book to dust anymore, full respect for forests of Amazonia (the pun is casual), which won’t be sacrificed to produced useless paper ( maybe they will be sacrificed for more noble purposes, like intensive agriculture, mines, I let you decided), no risk to get our fingers cut by the sharp edges of a paper page...

I know, I know, but we, the troglodytes, are slow and stubborn and stuck to our habits.
A book for us is still an object to like, to touch, to endear.
Its content, the novel, is like the soul of the book, but the book to be complete must have a material body too.
A book must get old like a friend, whom we can keep on loving during the years, feeling tenderness for their wrinkles and physical decay.
A book must smell of paper, of glue, of leather, of dust...

Leave me alone, if there is not any other possibility; leave me alone in my prehistoric cave, where things are still things, with shape and substance, let me alone with my old real books where I can even write on, yes, handwrite, with a pen.

I have learnt to use many very handy technological devices, I have learnt how to enjoy digital photography, I’m writing this useless note on a computer keyboard...
But we have all our limits.

I want that my books remain books.