I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Sometimes it's easy to assume a general reverence for books when the opposite is more the general case. I guess it can depend on the sort of books one favors, too. My local library has several volumes of Kipling old enough to bear the Hindu swastika. Every once in a while when I'm hankering for some ol' Rud, I'll take one out. They're real beauties. But then they probably mostly sit there on the shelf gathering dust in between the odd occasions when I check them out. One upside of e-readers, at least, is that they lower my chances of having to witness some vulgarian bend the spine back on a book so they can read it one-handed.
Anyway, since I'm here, I might as well update on my experience. I have grown to love my Kindle. I love being able to carry a bookshelf around in a cargo pocket, but who wouldn't? That's only the most obvious benefit. There are lots of interesting digital freebies out there, and I've gotten interested in the whole Creative Commons movement, as well as the indie-publishing movement. There's a whole new -- and expanding -- strata of stuff out there that's sometimes only available digitally. Project Gutenberg and Munsey's are inexhaustible wells of yumminess.
Sometimes you'll stumble across promotional freebies too, as I did recently with a recent download of the audio version of the, ah, shall we say, off-color
Go the F*** to Sleep, read by Sam Jackson, a "children's book for grown-ups" meant to put a smile on the faces of frustrated and overtired parents. Fortunately I'm past that stage myself, but I'll be picking up a hard copy for some friends whose new boss is due soon.
Perhaps most unexpected of all -- as Ibrin mentioned above, it's fairly easy to put your own content into an e-reader-friendly format.
A note about concerns over Amazon's control over the digital content they sell you -- when there was a recent update to LotR, they didn't just push it to my device. They sent me an email and gave me the option to update to the new file or not. So, for now at least, the policy seems to be evolving towards a more respectful stance towards the user. And despite a sloppy start in many cases (LotR not the least), the obvious inevitability here is towards digital editions which are perfect reproductions of print editions.
Having Tolkien handily available anywhere at any time (and searchable!) is a great luxury. Sure, I'd love to always be able to sit down in my favorite comfy chair in my quiet man-cave with a treasured edition and a snifter of brandy near to hand, but in these busy days I can't really afford to fetishize the reading experience. The simple fact is that I'm doing a lot more reading since I got my Kindle.