Books or Nooks?

Walking into a Barnes & Noble, you're confronted with a display of their portable electronic book delivery system. You can't miss it. It's blocking your path from the door to the books. I suppose these gadgets are good things, over all. They save loads of space in your house if you're a person who buys a lot of books. If everyone read them, we'd probably save a lot of trees.

But don't you think the guy demonstrating them feels a little strange? He works in a bookstore, and he's selling a piece of technology which, if it really takes off, might make it necessary to close a lot of bookstores and put him out of a job. Him and a bunch of other people involved in making, selling, and delivering books.

I don't know that there's any going back from a system that allows a person to get his media electronically. I guess I should feel grateful, but my two favorite places in the world are bookstores and record stores. The job I look back on with the most fondness is my four-year stint in a college bookstore. As easy as the new technology makes it for me to get anything I want, I'm going to miss going through shelves looking for treasures. I don't know if I could get used to not doing that.