This guy doesn’t necessarily think so (though he also admits to owning a couple of e-readers).

Like most critiques of e-readers (critiques I don’t necessarily disagree with), the focus is on the physical, because that is, isn’t it, the real, or perceived, point of difference.

You are not holding a copy of Notes from Underground. You are holding a sort of computer that may or may not hold Notes from Underground. But that can’t be it. Not really. Words, letters, sentences are still just a form of coding, just like the mystical sparks that hold the codes for Notes from Underground on an e-reader (I don’t actually have that book on my Nook – but it’s a great book, one of those things angry young men should read in their teens and twenties before graduating to The Brothers Karamazov).

No, where the essayist (Andrew Piper, I should name drop him, or hat tip him, or whatever the proper yet hip terminology is for giving him credit here) gets it right is in referencing the estimable and readable Saint Augustine of Hippo:

Augustine is sitting beneath a fig tree in his garden, and upon hearing the voice he takes up the Bible lying near him and opens a passage at random and begins reading (Romans 13:13-14). At this moment, he tells us, “I had no wish to read more and no need to do so. For in an instant, as I came to the end of the sentence, it was as though the light of confidence flooded into my heart and all the darkness of doubt was dispelled.” Augustine closes the book, marking his place with his finger, and goes to tell his friend Alypius about his experience. His conversion is complete.