“What do Naked Girls have against e-books?”

We’re glad you asked.  And since you asked so nicely (ie: clicked on the weirdly propaganda-ish symbol), we’re happy to tell you.

Here’s the thing.  E-Books are convenient.  E-Books are helping to keep authors and publishers in business.  E-Books are even said to help the environment by saving paper (but those batteries can’t be good, right?). E-Books are probably unavoidable as we move into the future.  But E-Books are NOT sexy.

Listen, we’re not Ludites.  We Tweet, we Tumbl…some of us even Gram, you know, instantly.  And often (quite often, in fact) we do those things naked.  But as a rule, we don’t bask in the unflatteringly cool blue light of an e-ink screen.

Books are a tactile, ritualistic experience – or at least they should be.  When reading a book, one should be able to grasp it in both hands and actually grapple with the text.  You should feel the impending maudlinism as the pages in your left hand pile up and the pages in your right hand wane.  And yes, you should be able to do all this in the bathtub.

And don’t even get us started on ownership.  What?  You want us to start on ownership?  Okay.  Did you know that when you “purchase” an e-book, in most cases you don’t own it?  You are only licensing a work – a work that can be taken back by the company that licensed it to you at any time, without notice and without returning your “purchase” price.  Not only that, but if you read the fine print, you’ll notice that it is not legal to loan this “book” to a friend like you can a real book (You know friends, right?  You have them on Facebook.).  Really, there’s just too many reasons to list them all and we end up sounding like we’re grousing for the sake of grousing.

And we’d rather celebrate!  So, let’s make a ritual of reading.  Let’s support local book stores and purchase the written, tangible word.  Let’s throw or clothing on the floor (or fold it neatly in the drawer if that’s your thing), pick up a bona fide book and dive in.  It is exponentially more sexy.  We promise.

Plus, then you can save your battery use for other things…