I don’t want an e-book reader for many reasons. I don’t like the concept of having to plug in my book. I’m terrible at remembering to charge things and the last thing I need is another electronic item to remember to plug in before it dies. You never have to worry about charging paper.

I like being able to throw a book in a bag and go. You can’t throw an e-reader anywhere without the possibility of breaking it. Yes, it’s smaller than some books and more lightweight, but you have to be careful about banging it against heavy objects or dropping it. I’m terrible about dropping things. I’ve dropped my phone on concrete more than a dozen times. I had to get a soft, rubberized outer shell for it so that it bounces instead of breaking and the battery doesn’t go flying out every time I butterfinger it.

I am bad at remembering things. A lot of times when I’m reading a book, I need to flip back and read details again to refresh my memory. My brain isn’t good with remembering minutiae, but it usually tells me where to find the things I forgot, for example, it was roughly twenty pages back on the left page near the bottom. That would be lost with an e-reader. Plus, you can only see one page at a time, not a spread.

They still don’t have all the books I want to read available in electronic form. I have very obscure taste in books and only a quarter of them would even be available to me anyway, which brings me to my next point – the library.

I am one of those people that the library probably hates since every book I borrow from them has to be sent to my local branch from the central depository. This is partially due to my obscure taste in books and partially because my local branch has a classics section smaller than my pantry. Some poor librarian must cringe when they see my name at the central depository since it means they have to go way down into the basement and pull out a book that hasn’t seen the light of day in 30 years. I’m not kidding either. I recently ordered a book that still had the old paper card in it and the last time it was checked out was 1978. They probably hate pulling books for me, but they love me come budget time. I prove to the budget people that these services are actually necessary. I am a happy little statistic in their demand column when it comes to funding.

The public library is an essential service and e-books will put them out of business. Not only does the library open minds by lending books, but they have free computers that anyone can use, they loan movies and music, and they have classes and entertainment for children. They provide story hours, after-school activities, computer instruction classes and adult literacy programs. Every time I go to my local branch, there’s a line. In my opinion, the public library system provides one of the greatest public services that man has ever invented. It inspires imagination and I cannot fathom what I would be like as an adult had I not availed myself of their services as a child.

Here in Los Angeles, the Mayor and City Council have already cut library services by two days a week and they’re trying to kill it even more. When people are unemployed and times are tough like they are now, services like the library are needed the most. Rather than saving some of that money we were rolling in a few years back, they spent it all and now they’re trying to kill public services altogether. To read more about Mayor Villaraigosa’s evil plan to kill the library, go to savethelibrary.org.

My biggest point of contention with e-readers is the inability to loan out your books. My friends and I have an unofficial reading circle. One of us will find an awesome book and pass it around to all the rest. I have books that I sent out into the circle a year or two ago and they’re still making the rounds. There are some books that I’ve bought multiple copies of because they never made it back to me. That’s fine with me since it means someone else is enjoying it. You cannot loan e-books, which makes them positively useless in my world. Not being able to loan a book to a friend is their biggest disadvantage. Once you buy a paper book, it’s yours forever and you can do with it what you like. That is not the case with e-books. E-books turn reading into a solitary, digital-rights managed activity and that I cannot abide.