As a book nerd heading to college, I am conflicted. Do I give in to the newest advancements in lightweight reading technology? Or, do I remain a stubborn paper-book reader, resigned to carrying heavy, expensive physical copies?

Phrased like that, the answer seems clear.

An eReader, like the Amazon Kindle or the Barnes & Noble Nook, is actually relatively inexpensive, around 100 dollars, considering the price of digital books.  The devices are lightweight and can easily fit into a backpack or purse, which is particularly useful to a college student, like me, heading for a big city.

I have even held both a Nook and a Kindle in my hands and can attest to the fact that their screens are pleasantly matte and book-like, not harshly backlit like an iPad. And yet, I have some visceral reaction against purchasing such a practical gadget.

The Kindle and the Nook lack certain qualities a bookish young adult enjoys in an honest-to-God, made-of-paper novel. Books smell good, like binding glue and yellowing pages or crisp paper, depending on the age.

There’s something nice about watching pages gather from one cover to the other as you read closer and closer to the end. I like turning pages, and I find the eReader’s page-flipping feature a little bit hokey. I want to read with a pen in hand, ready to write to a future reader or to myself in a reread.

Books, unlike eReaders, foster community. Even if an electronic device allows book sharing, the experience of passing on a paperback to a friend or reading a dog-eared, underlined copy of a book someone you know really loves is lost in the cold, silver database of a Kindle.

An eReader may be able to recommend books based on your interests, but it cannot start a conversation about books it has read and loved recently. An eReader is not a library, a bookstore, or a café; it has no atmosphere or personality.

Despite all of the services and savings this literary technology offers, the lacks it presents make me hesitant to try it.

With the impending move of newspapers and magazines towards online and tablet publication, I will inevitably break down, follow the trend, and purchase a Nook. Perhaps even this summer, faced with the long drive to New York and only one box to haul heavy books, I will wish for something lighter and more accessible to pass the time. But my heart will always be with real ink, not the digital ink font, the texture of paper, not a screen made to look like paper, with crumbling and broken spines, not a shiny catalogue of abstract stories to be called up on a whim.

I recognize, of course, that my reasoning is flawed. I can already see myself as an old person, glaring down at fresh-faced readers of the next generation (assuming, of course, that future people still read) screeching, “Back in my day, we had these buildings called libraries! And if you wanted a book you had to actually go somewhere, check it out or buy it, and carry it home!” And the children will scoff at my elderly, obstinate misunderstanding of how the modern world works.

Will I, by that time, learn to love reading on a screen just as I have learned to love music on a tiny electronic device? Perhaps.

In the meantime, I shall continue reading novels in book form and waiting to be converted to the way of the literary future.