Don't judge an eReader by its cover

Because if it looks like Amazon's new Kindle 2, you'll be begging for it to launch over here.

Sleek and stylish with text to speech and MP3 capabilities, it's a gadget-lover's dream. But will it replace books?

The amount of times I've dropped my book in the bath/splurged suncream all over it/trodden on it because I slung it on the floor next to my bed before going to sleep means the reality of owning an eReader will be a short lived investment of a product I am destined to break.

There seem to be endless headlines about the death of the book, and so much debate about the future of reading and whether eReaders will replace books as we know them. Maybe I've been drinking too much of the Blurb coolaid, but I just don't see the book dying. Publishing models will change, that seems a certainty. But will the book die? No.

Apart from all my reasons above, we're human and we have this odd thing we do where we collect and hoard stuff. I'm a film fan. I have a massive movie collection, half of which is on VHS. I can digitise it, but I also want to keep the originals.

It's the same with music. I will always buy the CD of the band or album I really love, because I want to own the original.

We're funny creatures, we want the latest and greatest but also get very sentimental about 'things'. The members of Bookcrossing can't just give a book to a secondhand shop, they have to track its journey.

So we'll buy the new Kindle, it'll be fun for a while, but the battery will run out 2 hours before my plane lands just as I get to a crucial part in the story. And I won't be able to bend the cover over backwards and read it with suncream soaked hands whilst dangling my feet in the pool. So I'll lose interest, and it will be resigned to the man drawer of the house.