To e (book) or not to e (book), that is the question. They are at it again. People are predicting the demise of the book. We are moving to a paperless society. Bookstores are closing. Libraries will soon be a thing of the past. Not so fast! I've heard it all before. Television was going to kill off the movie industry. Didn't happen. Of course, things have changed. The movie palaces closed. In downtown Seattle, we had the Orpheum, Blue Mouse, Coliseum, Winter Garden, Colonial, Palomar, Paramount, Music Box, 5th Avenue, Cinerama, and a few more. All gone except for the 5th Avenue and Paramount which have become venues for live theater (which was supposed to be doomed by the advent of movies) when not suffering "COVID-safety related disruptions" and Cinerama which may, or may not, reopen some time in the future. And now, television as we once knew it has changed, too.
But the debate between advocates of the book vs fans of the e-book continues. For many of us, nothing can substitute for the comforting feel of a book. A well made book has hefty paper, a distinctive font, good binding and endpapers that echo the content of the book, an appealing dust jacket, and, of course, a good story or informative text. The e-book provides the story and is handy for travel since you can pack a lot of stories into one device. Guess which camp I fall into? I would never have bought myself an e-book reader, but since I was given one, it has certainly come in handy. I love my e-book reader, but I love being surrounded by books more. And let's face it, it is profoundly unsatisfying to read an illustrated book on an e-reader.
An article in the Los Angeles Times reported that reading from a light-emitting device - an e-book or tablet - before going to bed can alter your body's clock, making it harder to get to sleep and leaving you feeling groggy the next day. In a test, people were to read a book before going to bed for five consecutive nights and then read from an iPad for the same amount of time and same number of days. They had a mandatory bedtime of 10 pm and were awakened at 6 am. Blood tests after reading from an iPad showed suppressed levels of evening melatonin and the next day, the increase in melatonin occurred 90 minutes later than on the days when the guinea pigs - I mean, test subjects - had been reading from books.
Well, what this all comes down to for me is that the important thing is to read. Read an e-book when you're traveling. Read a real book before bed. Just read!