The age of the electronic book

As it may be obvious to basically everyone in the western world the electronic reader is becoming a rather big thing. While I have yet to really see anyone with a dedicated book reading device (the kobo looks nice) the numbers show books are selling decently well. I have one problem with this though, I love books... you know the old tree killing destroyed by water kind. I have a bookshelf behind me and three over at the other side of the room all filled to the brim with books. I love the feel of the pages, I love the smell, I love revisiting them and the pages slowly browning. Basically I heart books =P

Now I have never tried reading the books on the Iphone and the only time I have ever used a reader was in Borders last week, but from what I saw they have a loading time. Now granted it takes time to turn the page of a book but you can alter this by having a faster hand. What I don't want to do is reach the climax at the end of the chapter and then sit there, waiting for the next one to appear on the reader. I may be wrong here and I may just be nitpicking because of my love of a flammable media but that would be a real show stopper for me.

Sure I could use a search function to find things when I need to (imagine how much easier it would be to do research), but how can I turn the corner of the page to mark my place? I like bookmarks, what am I going to do with my current connection other than say glue to the back of my new kobo?

Still there are good things about it, I heard from a friend you can trade books one way or another. That is pretty sweet and something I would definitely be there for. And my collection would be less.. moth eaten if it was digital (both from moths themselves and bloody visitors with sticky fingers). I mean there are definite advantages.

In the end there only needs to be one additional feature for me to ever want to change to the electronic book age. A barcode reader. Yes yes I know there would be problems verifying the ownership of a book's barcode and there would need to be a system to allow bookshops to hide them from customers, but if I could scan all my old books in I would so be there.

I love books so much =P