I RESPECTFULLY disagree with Priyanka Sharma’s opinion on e-books, published on June 20.

    Many book lovers see e-books as a threat where I see them as an opportunity to keep younger generations eager to read. First of all, because it’s a screen, and it seems the younger generation have difficulties doing anything else than looking at a screen (I’m being slightly caricatural).

    Sharma was writing about the practical aspect of real books, about the fact that we would not worry about sun or water with them. I personally always carry my Kindle to the beach. I only use a ziplock bag to make sure it does not get sand or water on it when it’s in my beach bag. But you can notice also that now more and more mobile phones are fully water- and sand-proof.

    Still, from a practical point of view, I like being able to hold my Kindle in one hand while lying on my back in my bed, not having to use your two hands to keep a book open!

    It is also lightweight and can carry a great number of books, saving you a lot of trouble when packing for holidays. You can share and rate the books you like, you can highlight the parts you liked, and see what others have highlighted, too.

    I have been raised in an environment where I have always been told that a house filled with many books usually means that people living inside are interesting, clever people. It might be true, although people could also read at libraries.

    On the other hand, some have book shelves loaded with many books but only a few of them have been read.

    Showing how erudite you are based on the size of your book shelf is, in my opinion, a thing of the past. I used to be sentimentally attached to all my books on my shelves. I asked myself what is the exact purpose of collecting all these books as I have a really low probability of re-reading a great majority of them. So I gave them away and it felt good, more room on my shelves.

    And I don’t really care about what people think about me, if they find my home has very few books.

    And believe me, I have the same sense of accomplishment when I’ve finished an e-book as when I’ve finished a printed book. Now I record the books that I have read on a virtual shelf on Goodreads.com and it gives me great recommendations for my future reading according to how I have rated the novels I have read.

    We should not consider only those who read printed books “true book lovers.” I have friends that read only on their Kindle, and they are the type of readers who start having panic attacks when they’re running out of books to read.

    The only drawback I find with e-readers is that you cannot scan an e-book as fast as you would do flipping pages on an actual book. But the “search this word or name within this book” feature helps a lot when you have complicated stories with many characters.

    Yann Le Berre via emial