Yes, I’ve called E-readers “the devil’s instrument.” Yes, I’ve shared some of my conspiracy theories on plots to destroy the joy of the printed word. Yes, I do indeed have a small mountain of books at my house because I’ve run out of shelf space but can’t stop buying them. And no, I don’t regret it.  But as irrational as I can be about the superiority of a physical book over its virtual equivalent, I also have a logical case. Really.  From commercials to endorsements by the average E-reader owner, it’s obvious that one of the main reasons everyone promotes getting one is for convenience. I get it: you can use your smartphone app to access your books and read them during football games. That’s cool. And yes, I get that it’s easier to carry around one reasonably-sized device than giant tomes when traveling. And E-books tend to be cheaper. And you can get them faster than a shipment of books from Amazon.  Fine, I concede. You’re right. But just because something seems superficially more convenient doesn’t mean it’s better in the long term.   Take, for example, the Kindle. Back in 2009, Amazon deleted electronic copies of “Animal Farm” and “1984” from customers’ E-readers. (To be fair, Amazon refunded the purchase price and removed the copies because they were illegal.)   But that’s not the point. The point is that if I had unknowingly bought an illegal, physical copy of “Animal Farm,” Amazon wouldn’t have crawled into my bedroom window and stolen it from my bedside table. And, no, I’m not advocating keeping illegal copies of material, but there’s a limit of what companies should be able to do (and, to be fair, Amazon eventually said they wouldn’t do it again). But that doesn’t mean that something similar can’t happen somewhere else.  Sure, no one really owns Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings except for those who created the world or hold the rights to the creations. But with real books, we have more guaranteed control over our copies of the source material.   We can lend our books for as long as we want. If we want to sell a book, we can. We can be assured that if we annotate the pages, our work will not be destroyed so long as the book is intact.   E-books may be convenient, but they have too many strings attached and too many phrases in their licensing agreements that make me formulate conspiracy theories of how companies can take away the freedom I’m used to having. With a real book, the only fine print I have to deal with is copyright, and since I respect authors, I have no intention of violating that. The printed word means freedom.   And, to a degree, I don’t trust technology. I know, perhaps I should go live in an era without a computer. But let’s face it: batteries don’t last forever, hardware dies, bad things happen on the Internet.   So, whether it’s getting to the good part of the book and losing battery life because I forgot to charge an E-reader, or if the world goes “Revolution” one day and the power shuts off, what good is an E-reader then, I ask you. I’ll still be able to read Charles Dickens by candlelight. And I’ll be happy about it. Until I burn my house down.  But really, E-readers have some merit. Obviously. But real books are simply better. There’s history in a book. You can see the pages where you stained them because you cried so hard or underlined a quote that meant something to you when you read it 10 years ago. You can see their age, the dog-eared pages and see your progress as you turn the pages.   The tangible object evokes memory: I can still remember when my dad bought me the Harry Potter series and hid it behind the tree during Christmas and reading my first chapter book with my mom at the start of kindergarten (“Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase,” if you cared. You didn’t.)  Books are to inspire, explore, push boundaries and bring new worlds to life. And holding a novel in your hand better encompasses that than bland words on a computer screen. And maybe I’m just a little too trite and romantic, but it simply seems more magical as you open up the pages to begin an adventure.