Sister made a good comment in that reading is to be encouraged in any form and if it takes electronic readers to get some youngsters into it thats brilliant.
Personally (in case anyone missed it ) i'm not a fan of the electronic format. And i have been offered a sony ebook reader that cost 200 euro for free so its not a case that i'm jealous of the technology. Quite the opposite as i tend to get quite a few gadgets and computer games etc. So i'm not anti changing technology.
But when it comes to books i just prefer the printed version .
I love hunting in charity shops, second hand shops and online for nice editions.
With books i prefer hardbacks and will buy them over the paperbacks whenever possible. Theres something about the feel of a good hardback book.
Someone made the point about schools using textbooks recently but i went through school and college with paper books and these became heavily annotated with observations , notes , possible exam questions etc. This helped greatly with later study . there might be a click button on a kindle for adding notes but its never going to be as accessable as hand notes.
There is also the major book lovers joy of passing on a book they loved to others. E books kill the joy of shring.
The cost factor which people argue tends to balance out either way . You don't need specialist equipment to read a book. The cost of a newly published book versus the e book version tends to be very small.
And there is a lot of bargains to be had in the second hand market. Yes there are occasionally free books but a lot of them are available for a euro in paper without the 100 quid piece of equipment so agian balance.
To each there own but i'm sticking with real books
. I know, I know, stupid first world comment. 
bite so easily.....
