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We live in a utilitarian age. Books are seen as purely a medium for the text, & as the text is the only thing that has value it can therefore be presented in whatever form is cheapest & most convenient (an e-reader is the cheapest form from the point of view of the publisher, as it costs effectively nothing to transmit a file). This is what happened with recorded music - going to the store to buy an LP, bringing it home, switching on the record player, taking the disc out of the sleeve(s), putting it on the turntable, moving the arm & placing the needle in the groove & then sitting down to actually listen to the songs, in the intended order - that was all unnecessary nuisance, because all that really mattered was hearing the music.....except, for a great many of us, that ritual was part of the experience. Downloading individual songs, & having thousands of tracks available in your pocket to shuffle through has trivialised the way we experience music by making it too 'easy'. (not to mention the fact that the mp3 format is such terrible quality). Again, that's why I'm uncomfortable with having LotR as an e-book - it actually feels like trivialising the whole experience of reading it. Don't know if this makes sense, but I feel that if its inconvenient to read it - if I can't have it to hand at an instant's notice, if I have to wait till I get back home & set aside the time to read it properly, well, that's what it 'deserves'. It matters to me & therefore I owe it to myself, the text, & to the author to treat it like that.
That said, there are many books out there that I'd like to try out first & which may not be available in my local library, which may be out of print - or too expensive to buy even when they are out of copyright because of the type of editions they're available in. The real problem would only arise if we got to the point when e-books became the norm & real books went the way of the LP, only available in specialist shops at exorbitant prices. Till then, I'm happy to have a Kindle to hand for the trivial stuff & the stuff I can't get elsewhere.
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