Like many nerds, I am particularly fond of the physical object of the book. They smell like everyone is about to leave me alone for a while. Last year, my dear mother gave me a Kindle as a gift, and I was suspicious of it for maybe 20 minutes. Then I acknowledged that an e-book is superior to a p-book in so many regards as to render its few inferiorities petty. On the minus side, you can’t flip through it—this turns out to be a deal-breaker for textbooks and reference materials—and you can’t loan it to people. Amazon’s lending policy is bullshit, but it is compensated for by their not-obliterating-thousands-of-trees policy, their books-weigh-nothing policy, their instant delivery and the fact that most new titles cost $9.99. I was using the past tense of “cost,” there. E-books used to mostly cost $9.99; then they suddenly cost $12.99 and $14.99. Then the Department of Justice filed an anti-trust complaint against Apple and five major publishers. That brings us to where we are now.

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