A book is an old friend!

There is nothing like the feeling of a book in your hands. Now don't get me wrong, I do have a love affair going on with my kobo mini. 1500 books at my fingertips at anytime any place I want and the ease of fitting in my pocket. It's a walking library at my disposal anytime I wish. But there is absolutely nothing that compares to holding a book in your hands, feeling the cool pages in your hands open and exposed waiting for you to read. Old books show the markings of dog eared pages, past spots where the reader before hand has loved them. New books are fresh and virginal, the spine cracks a bit as you break it open for the first time. There is something more intimate about that book in your hands. It's a torrid love affair that leaves wanting more at the end of it. Wishing that you could go back to that moment before the denouement and relive it over and over again. And indeed you do, with a book you can go back and relish the moments where you fall in love with a character. Read it over and over again until the words are memorized in your mind. With a book you can create a live action movie in your mind and imagine the details of the characters drawn out in the book. You can fall in love, get angry, get jealous and even cry. Reading a book is more like a relationship or a love affair if the book is an especially good one. It leaves you hungry for more. You can visit strange lands in your mind, places that don't even exist but for the briefest moments in the annals of your imagination. You can do things and achieve things you never thought possible just by picking up a dusty old book. Years later when you revisit it, often the passion is stronger like a marriage where you know the book intimately, you have an idea what is going to happen and your eyes seek that deeper and desperate meaning. Sure I love my kobo, it's like a quick kiss from a loved one even if the story is a long one. It is information. But nothing compares to turning that page in a real life book. Visiting it over and over again in the years. Watching the pages turn from bright white to the faded brown with time and wear. On the kobo they are still the same, no dog eared loved pages, nothing to show that someone once loved this story. Although computers and ereaders, Iphones and androids all have their use. If you really want a child to learn to read, learn to love to read, grow up having a healthy respect for books, give them one. It's the one addiction I promise won't harm them.