I agree with him about not reading books described as "luminous" and disdaining belted shorts. Like him, I read voraciously. And I absolutely disagree with him about e-readers. Books are delightful physical objects, but not all books are created equal. My copy of Ulysses, highlighted and annotated by a younger, smarter me, stuffed with notes from the class in which we studied the book like it was a dissected fetal pig, that book is valuable. That book I will keep. But the Clive Cussler novel about Dirk Pitt dirking pitts dirkily that I kept in the car to read between shifts? Not so much. It served its purpose. It can go. I will never look at it again.

Now, you can argue that one can never really know whether any given book will be That Book, and while that's true, it's just as true that the vast majority of them aren't going to be. So an e-book is fine for 80% of my casual reading. It's more convenient. I'm not wasting a tree. I like effortlessly looking up the definitions of words and wikiing historical references as I read. And if I really like it? I'll buy a hardback copy for keepsies.

"E-books or paper books" is a false dichotomy. The answer is "both".

I enjoy Pete Seeger's banjo playing.