E-Reading: 10 Things You Don’t Want to “Hold in Your Hand”

“I just can’t do that e-reading thing. I prefer to hold a book in my hand.”

Before I started being published in e-book format, I was just as resistant to e-readers. I love books. Every room in my house has books in it. All three of my children have books on shelves, in drawers, under beds. Hell, I used to be a librarian. I’m a reader. You know what used to drive me nuts?

Leaving the book I was reading at home.

You know that feeling. You find yourself in the doctor’s office waiting much longer than you’d anticipated. The magazines are either old or uninteresting. You find yourself longing for the book you were heart-deep in, the one that you just reached the climactic point of before time to leave the house. That book that’s sitting on the kitchen counter.

Ah, but if you were reading that book on your NOOK, even if your NOOK is sitting on the kitchen counter, you’ve probably got your smartphone with the NOOK app on it…and wah-la! Put your phone in airplane mode, pull up your book and start reading. Same thing for the Kindle. You NEVER don’t have your book.

So, although books are great and very pleasant to the touch, I thought I’d make a list of ten things that would be even worse to hold in your hand than an e-reader.

10. Anything your kid spits out of his mouth.

9. A slug.

8. A live cockroach.

7. A squished cockroach.

6. A hot coal.

5. That gooey slime stuff Nickelodeon uses all the time.

4. Chewed bubblegum.

3. Chewed bubblegum from under the seat of a chair in a doctor’s office.

2. Used cat litter.

1. An actual physical copy of 50 Shades of Grey.

E-reader doesn’t sound so bad now, does it?