But this is what I have concluded. The Kindle is like the sensible man your mother wanted you to marry. She can list a dozen reasons why this man is good for you. But she omits the crucial ingredient: chemistry. The man doesn’t excite you.

It’s easy to turn the Kindle on. But I have found the Kindle doesn’t turn me on. The thrill is gone: the thrill of anticipation as I toy with a printed book, turn the first page to read the author’s dedication or bits of poetry; the list of his/her other books, the reprints from reviews; and then the flip to the back page to ponder the author’s photo, and skim the acknowledgments.

All these preliminaries, a kind of foreplay to the act of reading itself, just aren’t the same with a Kindle.