We do not have the shelf space for my habit and both of us know it. The second bedroom is already half game closet, boxes stacked in a specific order only I fully understand, and the other half is books, two deep on most shelves now, the kind of arrangement where finding a specific title means a small archaeological dig. Callum’s pitch for an e-reader is completely reasonable and I’ve heard it probably a dozen times over two years and I still haven’t caved, and I finally sat down to actually work out why instead of just repeating “I just like the object” like that settles it.

Part of it, honestly, is the job. I spend all day making judgments about a physical manuscript, margins, the weight of paper stock on a proof, and there’s something about that same physical relationship carrying over into what I read for myself that I don’t want to give up, the actual page turning under my thumb registering as a different kind of attention than a screen swipe does for me, even if I can’t fully defend that as anything more than a felt difference rather than a provable one.

But the bigger part, the one I hadn’t admitted until I actually tried to write this out, is the notebook. My whole one-line verdict system depends on being able to physically locate a book again years later, pull it off the shelf, remember where I was sitting when I read a specific passage, and an e-reader library doesn’t give me that same spatial memory, everything looks the same on the same screen regardless of when or where I read it. The Rings of Saturn lives on the second shelf from the top, near the window, and something about walking past it regularly keeps it more alive in my head than a file buried in a folder would.

Callum’s not wrong about the space problem, we’re going to have to solve it eventually, probably with a second bookcase we don’t currently have room for either. But until the apartment actually forces the issue, I’m buying the paperback, stacking it two deep if I have to, and the e-reader stays a gift I keep politely declining.