Like you can cuddle up with a good book

Though it's high tech and smart

A book is pure art

For all it's microchip technology

And wireless connectivity

A Kindle is just IT

That can't replace your paper friend with a heart

Call me an old fogey or a boring fart

But you can't cuddle up with a Kindle

I'm not a Luddite

I willingly embrace the megabyte

But do we really want our bookshops and libraries to disappear from sight

And vanish like the vinyl LP

Left for dead by the MP3

With album covers we gazed at like lovers now history?

Don't give me plugs, wires and re-chargeable batteries

You can't cuddle up with a Kindle

A book has texture

Style

Individuality

Its own face

A spine

Genuine personality

When you first meet you whiff its wonderful ink

Then hold it tenderly and flick through each page

You display it on the shelf once you've read it

And watch it gracefully grow old as its leaves go gold with age

While an e-book just lies lazily on a hard drive

Flat, two-dimensional and never alive

Will our magazines, newspapers, comics and dictionaries survive

While this Kindle continues to thrive?

You can't cuddle up with a Kindle

Books can carry dedications, inscriptions, indelible memories, e.g.

`To Laura, happy birthday, love Mum and Dad, 2003'

To stay with you forever and ever

And when you're reading your novel on the train or tube

It's so cool to be seen together

Then everyone knows that you've got taste

And are not just another member of the Kindle clone race

Cuddle a Kindle in public you might get mugged

But you won't get attacked for the book that you hug

Say it proud

Say it loud

“I'M GLAD I GOT BITTEN BY THE BOOK-READING BUG”

Cause you can't cuddle up with a Kindle