Is it the ultimate gadget, the end of the book as a physical object?- or is it merely a tool, an occasionally convenient substitute, lacking the character, the feel, the overall experience of reading a book? Joanna Trollope in The Guardian discusses the pros and cons – and comes down very firmly in favour of the book, although, like many people, she feels that the e-book reader has its place:

The machines homogenised everything. No matter how striking the prose, the little grey screen subdued everything to sameness. I couldn’t sense the personality of the book…. The sheer heft of a book in your hand, whether it’s a slim volume of Julian Barnes or the doorstep of War and Peace, is not only pleasurable but informative…..The physical book is a great thing, sometimes even a beautiful thing, not just for its ability to furnish a room or be a bequest to your grandchildren, but also because it represents the undisputed evidence of what you have read yourself.

Interestingly, when Joanna Trollope first dared to air her views in The Telegraph, a couple of weeks ago, the online interview attracted the kind of abuse and ignorant ranting in the ‘Comments’ that you might associate with lesser organs. Why so defensive? She’s entitled to her opinion.

The relation of the e-book to the real book is like that of the download to the CD – a CD is an object which you can hold, put on a shelf, take off the shelf, look at, open… it has a cover, sleeve notes etc and a sense of a real existence. There are those for whom this doesn’t matter and those for whom it does.