A few months ago, I wrote a blog post about why regular old books are better than e-books.  I even made a snide comment about Borders’ e-book reader, which they released haphazardly in March of this year.  I don’t want to believe that this remark and the fact that I returned two books to Borders so that I could have enough money for food is what ran the company into the ground.  It probably had to do with some other stuff, too.  But I still feel sort of bad about it.

The truth is, I loved Borders and I am very sad that they are no more.  It seems like some other people are pretty sad too, but not nearly enough people. Borders was the second largest bookstore in the US.  Barnes & Noble is undoubtedly doing better than Borders but definitely isn’t doing great, and it certainly wouldn’t still be afloat without the Nook.  But let’s just say they go under too.  Where does that leave us? With a few independent bookstores scattered around the country that are failing as well. What happens when books are only electronic?

In a poignant and decidedly-unbiased article for Forbes, Deborah Sweeny wrote, “Though I can only hope we keep these stores alive and well within the years to come, bookstores will undoubtedly go the way of a record shop in the future. You’ll only be able to find a handful of them, independently owned and much loved by their fans in obscure areas of a city or nearby college campuses. But you’ll sooner find eReaders everywhere.”  She ends her poignant “Borders: A Retrospective” article on that note. But there is much more to worry about.  For example, will writers even bother to write books if they will only be published as e-books? I wouldn’t. Will publishing houses even exist or will everyone start self-publishing on Amazon? We’ve seen what happens when today’s popular culture catches hold of something and runs with it: enter Nicholas Sparks. Nora Roberts. Stephanie Meyer. Will blogs eventually merge with novels and tweets with news articles in the running for Pulitzer Prizes? As awesome as I think my blog posts and tweets are, I should hope not.

Or perhaps, I am just overreacting. If we really are comparing bookstores to record stores, then does it stand to say that since the music industry didn’t die out when records died out, that books won’t die out just because bookstores do? I was born in the CD generation, and that didn’t stop music either. But the thing is, CDs were shit, crap, utter garbage. Half the time, they didn’t even work for more than a few plays.  MP3s are definitely a much improved way to listen to music.  But I just can’t bring myself to say the same thing about e-books.

You can keep books for years and years.  They serve many purposes. They are memories. They are magical.  They are not a “dead” technology.  Then again, maybe the same crazed music lovers were making the same arguments about vinyl.  And there was nothing they could do to stop it.

All I can hope is that writers (good writers, not the trash novelists who will churn out e-book after e-book and pollute the world with more nonsense) will continue to create the works that book lovers so cherish.  I’ve never felt more like an old fart than I have while writing this, but damn, I don’t want to live in a world where kids ask their parents for bedtime stories on the iPad.  There’s just something wrong with that.