As I happily move forward into an e-book future, five short love-notes to my bound-paper friends.

These days, a shadow hangs over us devoted fans of the written word. A dark and looming shape in the form of a giant, pixelated question mark: to e-book, or not to e-book?

So many questions accompany this choice, it’s not an easy one to make. Is the transition inevitable, or should I fight the trend? Will it hurt or help the authors I want to support? Will I enjoy reading as much with this gadget as I do with printed pages? The doubt and uncertainty can be paralyzing.

But for my part, lacking the apartment space for more bookshelves, and with the current ones filled to bursting, it seemed like time to make the leap. So a few months ago, I gave in. I bought a Kindle.

Not that months of waffling, wondering, and even a bit of soul-searching didn’t precede my decision. I’ve loved books my whole life, and I’ve only ever read them one way: by turning pages. How strange that one day I’d switch to a form factor totally unlike my prior 25 years of reading experience — not to mention the thousands of years of readers before me. A paradigm shift like this certainly wasn’t to be taken lightly. After all, once I’d paid money for this thing, it would become my primary reading method. So this purchase felt like a point of no return. A potentially life-changing moment.

But you know what? My Kindle is wonderful. It’s an unexpected joy to read. It’s much easier on the eyes than reading computer screens, and my current crush on this beautiful new thing is making me read more. Its quick button-press page turning even lets me read faster once I get in the groove. Or maybe it just feels that way. Maybe it’s the reading more that helps me finish books sooner. The point is, I’m a fan.

However, despite my infatuation — I might even call it full-fledged love at this point — there are elements of physical books I already miss, some of which I never would have anticipated. So as I move forward into an e-book future, here are five short love-notes to my bound-paper friends.

But since I have no regrets, only fond memories, I’ve paired each with things the Kindle does well in its own right, to be fair. Some bright points to ease the fearful transition.

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1. Covers
Book covers can be beautiful. Evocative. Perplexing. They’re an art form. On Kindle? Not so much. Either a hazy black-and-white photocopy of the real cover, or a plain text title page. Not something you stare at, puzzle over, daydream about. No wonder the default starting point for a Kindle book is page 1 instead of the cover image. Their method is to get you straight into reading, and think of books as texts, not objects. (I’m sure Amazon would prefer if only the Kindle is treasured as such).

Plus, covers let people see what you’re reading and ask questions. Covers start conversations, whether lying on the coffee table, or in your hands at the airport. With Kindle, the only question you’ll get is, “How do you like your Kindle?” — a question which won’t be fun to answer forever. Covers make books fun to carry around as a badge, even when you’re not engaged with them. So why can’t the Kindle screen at least show the cover of the book I’m reading when I’m not reading it? What’s with these weird old public-domain screen savers?

However…
Okay, so the screen savers kind of grew on me. Though less artsy than designed covers, the mix of old author portraits and classical artworks does make them worth staring at now and then, and the fact that they rotate randomly adds an element of surprise. In fact, it’d be nice if they built in more, or updated with new ones every month or two. After a few weeks of flipping it on and off, I’d cycled through them pretty quickly and the sense of wonder started to fade. Would it be so hard to design Kindle edition covers and display my current selection, or even a random pick from my stored books?

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2. Back Covers
Surprising, I know, but I never realized I had a certain fondness for blurbs and quotes. After reading a while, I would occasionally flip over to the back cover and compare my experience of the book to its description. I’d measure if I was far enough in to form a picture that matched that alluring paragraph. Or wonder if I’d ‘caught up’ to the broader themes described there. Had I even met all the characters, been to all the places hinted at in those lines?

And let’s not leave out the superlatives used to describe the book. Weighing my own thoughts, they may seem well-earned or merely generous. Spot-on, or over-blown. (This also applies to the first few pages of praise that come in most paperbacks.) In a way, it was like having a conversation in my head with the critics or authors quoted there. In a healthy, non-lunatic way, of course.

However…
I am fully aware that those blurbs are mostly intended as a weak form of marketing, geared toward the bookstore browser. But, as a person who keeps an ever-growing list of books he’d like to read in the future, my browsing days are long past. With the Kindle, I can focus on that list and happily buy away, since prices are low and delivery is instantaneous. Perhaps best of all, new releases still in hard cover are practically half what they are in stores. Now I can read a book for a reasonable price while it’s still being discussed in lit blogs, news outlets, and social circles, instead of comparing my thoughts to a sampling of edited compliments. So far I’ve found this newer, non-mental conversation to be much livelier, and do not miss the obfuscation of ellipses.

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3. Bookstores
Despite not being much of a browser, there was something special about the feeling of wandering the stacks, which I genuinely miss. Being surrounded by hundreds and thousands of books that I might someday pick up and read gave such a feeling of potential. In my single days, the thought of meeting someone in the fiction aisle was a favorite fantasy too, especially since a giant Barnes and Nobles is within walking distance from my apartment. But even now, the satisfaction of strolling over, picking up a few paperbacks, and walking home with a bag full of future reading pleasures allows for an anticipation that a few clicks on a Kindle menu doesn’t quite match. And of course, the chance of a cashier striking up a conversation about your selections moves to zero in a one-click-purchase scenario.

However…
There is something to be said about immediate gratification. With a Kindle, as soon as I start nearing the end of a book, I start pondering what I might read next; and since issues of travel time or available inventory are eliminated, the possibilities are endless. The question is no longer, “What does this store have on hand?” or “Am I willing to wait for shipping time?” Whatever mood strikes, I choose another from my list and dive in, usually the same day. In an e-book world, it’s much easier to never not be reading something.

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4. Bookmarks
Since high school, a succession of very personal, dependable bookmarks have traveled with me through everything I read. Before graduating, my favorite teacher gave us all a beautiful laminated strip with colorful Renaissance astronomy charts, just like we’d learned about in his history class that semester. It lasted me years until I left it in a copy of Madame Bovary tucked in an airplane seat pocket. Distraught, I scrawled ‘Bookmark’ in big graffiti letters on an index card, and used that for the next several years until it literally fell apart. Since then, I’ve used a sticker with a Robot fish that one of my college housemates found and bought for all the rest of us (inside joke). Now, I may never use a bookmark again. That’s got to be worth mourning for at least a moment.

However…
Something about the lack of physical pages — which, yes, renders bookmarks quaint — also leads to an easy drop-in, drop-out quality with books on a Kindle. When you see the entirety of a book at once, picking it up to start reading feels like a commitment. I was always one to flip ahead to see how long I had until the next chapter break, just to know where I stood in relation to the book and the next potential stopping point. In fact, in the beginning that was another thing I missed about books.

But as I’ve spent time with e-books, there’s a distinctly different sense that it’s okay to just read a few screens worth and put it back down. Then, when I return, I’m back into the flow of the book more quickly. This is probably the hardest contrast to explain or elaborate on. It could be due to the abstraction of the text, and pages not needing to be physically flipped, just quickly advanced by button. It could be the difference between page numbers and physical size of a book versus the always-on percentage meter across the bottom of the screen. All I know for sure is that this light, attractive piece of electronics just begs to be picked up often, even if just for a few minutes here and there. And for some reason, the transition from not reading to reading has become more fluid, and going from reading a little to reading a lot happens more easily.

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5. Bookshelves
For my whole book-loving life, I’ve dreamed of having a library. Wall-to-wall shelves, my whole reading life on display, and a big comfy chair. A place where I could hide out with a great novel, but also show off my literary love to friends and family, loan out favorites, or reference passages of particular interest. My small apartment bedroom got halfway there, but with no more space for shelving, the dream was put on electronic hold. And though I love the idea of displaying my library and lending books to friends, that’s never really happened. People don’t visit that often, and even fewer of those are looking for something to borrow. Maybe the fantasy was never meant to be. Maybe it’s an old-media dream in a new-media world (I also still have shelves full of CDs and DVDs cluttering my living room). Or maybe I need nerdier friends.

However…
There is enormous potential in the connected book. Being able to highlight, comment on, and share passages in places like Twitter or Facebook can generate so much more discussion than notes in a margin. Even if the functionality is limited at this point, a system through which you can leave thoughts attached to a page, or see what others have left before you, could add so much value. By eliminating the perennial book-club problem of reading the book on a set time line, you can have an asynchronous discussion with anyone else who’s read the book before you. I imagine the 4th or 5th generation Kindles being extremely capable of creating a sort of ongoing social annotation, and I can’t wait to read books that way.

Plus, there’s the ability that comes with any digital media to share the books themselves with less effort, damage, or responsibility for timely returns, which only encourages more book-club-like behavior, and which I fully support. The more books become a part of our social lives, the more we’re encouraged to keep reading, and reading more, and buying new books to keep new writers writing.

The future of books may lack some of the romance of our bound paper past, but it’s an exciting time to be a reader nonetheless.

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A few notes:

Another Kindle feature I adore is its compatibility with Instapaper. In fact, that may be my favorite use for the e-reader. However, as that love note could go on for pages, we’ll save that for another post.

Also: Check out a similarly themed post that came over the wire between revisions of this article, “I, Reader” by Alexander Chee on The Morning News.