I wrote this poem in a post, on one of those Yahoo! groups about writing, long before I ever got into the e-book industry. I seriously never thought I’d give in and enjoy reading on a hand-held machine.

Books you can hold you can take to the john, on a bus, in your purse, while you wait at the doc’s. You can thumb through a book while you stand in a line; better yet, you can read when you want to kill time, at the beach, or at home when the power is out. Bend them back. Hold them high. Heck, just throw them around. They will never disappear when the battery goes dead, and you never need to fear breaking ‘puter parts in bed. They were here; they still are; and they always will be. I prefer books you can hold to the books that start with E-.

—April (copyright is mine, all mine, 2001)

[It’s in a paragraph, so I guess it isn’t poetry, but it’s off the top of my head, and I have no time for line breaks. So there.]

And look at me now. I’m currently reading two print books and two e-books, and they all get equal time. The print books are Lamb Special Gift Ed: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal and The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, Book 1). The e-books are The Hound of the Baskervilles and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling.

I’m sold on e-books, so consider me converted.

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