eBooks. We've all heard of them, and chances are the vast majority of us have used them at some time or another. Heck, I'm writing this article online to be published online for everyone else to read, you guessed it, online. So, it's easy to see this appeal of ease that comes with having a timeless world of literature literally at our fingertips. But I'm here to tell you that books, the real paper kind, are wildly important and they should not be forgotten. Ever.

Technology is an incredible thing. The advancements made over the last 20 years, even over the last 10 years, are truly impressive and noteworthy. And as much as we all like to complain about human contact becoming increasingly virtual, we also must all admit that we are terribly fond of our Facebook that allows us to connect with our families miles apart, and our emails that tell us class is cancelled rather than getting to the door only to see a sign posted. Technology is undeniably and irrevocably a part of our lives that we should all embrace with the right attitude.

Some things, however, are just too good to give up. Books, real hard copy books, are too important to hand over to the world of technology. Living within each book is a world that some author created, and when you hold that book in your hand, you are holding their world. The emotions the book evokes, the characters, the text - it's all tangible. Of course, an eBook is all the same words and they are still beautiful, but my greatest fear is that my great grandchildren will never know the smell of a new book, or the feeling of walking into a book store and being overwhelmed with curiosity for all of those words on all of those pages! Instead, they might buy a book online and it will start a wireless download to their Kindle... they will never actually feel that book in their hands.

So I ask you to consider the importance of real books to you, and then to think of a world where they no longer exist. The cultural loss would be enormous - the entire world of literature shifting into a new era. But, perhaps that is inevitable as technology propels us into the future. If this may be the case, I suppose I should find myself in bookstores far more often.