For Christmas, my dad bought me a new Nook to replace the old, shattered one that was buried in my drawer. I was ecstatic when I opened up the box and found the new slim, gorgeous eReader inside. The days following Christmas consisted of me downloading all the books that had been left stranded in my Barnes & Noble cart. My Nook is now loaded with over one-hundred books that I have yet to read. Still, I find myself searching online daily for new recommendations to add to this never-ending list. I don’t know if I’ll ever even read all the books in my online library – there are so many! If I owned all of my eBooks in paperback format, they would take up a whole room.

An eReader is incredibly convenient, and I love that. I like to read while I eat, so placing the Nook up against the table centerpiece allows me to read comfortably while I chow down. With a paperback, reading without using both hands is almost impossible. Paperbacks need attention. They need to be touched and the pages need to be turned. My Nook doesn’t demand much from me besides a simple tap to turn the page. Is it as satisfying as physically holding a page in between my fingers to turn it? Definitely not, but you can’t have it all.

My Nook also travels everywhere with me. I slip it into the pocket of my carry-on, and I’m all set for a long flight. If my book bag is loaded with my laptop, textbooks, and notebooks, throwing in a heavy novel isn’t ideal. The fact that my Nook doesn’t weigh down my bag the slightest bit is a huge plus. Lugging physical books around can be arduous for a weak girl like myself!

Despite my infatuation with my eReader and it’s portability, I find myself missing the tattered spine of a paperback. The feel of turning a book’s pages in your hands is something I wish I didn’t care about. And if you’re not a bookworm, you probably don’t get it. But there’s something about reading on my eReader that feels so… impersonal. Pushing a button to turn a page is quick and efficient, but it’s not the same!

I miss lifting the paper in anticipation when I reach the bottom of a page. I also long to physically highlight and underline phrases in books. Endless margins of my physical books are covered in annotations, and colored tabs mark my favorite pages.

Things are too easy with my Nook. She’s lovely and sleek, but I yearn for my paperbacks. I settle for her because she makes my life a bit easier, and my Dad would kill me if I told him I wasn’t reading on my Nook because it’s just “not the same.” Is this a first world problem? Yes. I have access to millions of books at my fingertips but I can’t stop complaining! But like I said, it’s just not the same.