I remember the first time I saw one. I was in a meeting with the publisher of my first book, Hopscotch & Handbags, discussing the cover when someone, searching through her own handbag for some notes, put this… this thing on the table.

We poked it gingerly before turning questioning eyes on its owner. ‘What be this strange futurebox?’ we wondered. It was, it turned out, the future of reading. When she turned her e-reader on and put it through its paces, half the room recoiled, the other half leant forward in fascination, a bifurcation of attitude that has followed the e-reader ever since. But the forward-leaners are winning. E-book sales overtook print book sales in the US last year and soon doubtless will outpace 3D tomes over here soon too – Christmas Day 2011 in the UK saw 1.3 million e-readers given as gifts and some big publishers reported more than 100,000 downloads each that same day. All of my colleagues have them and most of my friends – people I previously thought of as human beings with hearts, souls and inner lives. Now I see e-readers everywhere, even on the train home – and frankly, when you see an innovation leap the Thames and make it south, you usually know it’s time to stop fighting.

Never. I loathe them. They seem to be almost exactly everything books and reading are meant not to be. You cannot immerse yourself in a book onscreen. It is a cold, hard, affectless experience. On top of that, I agree with Nicholas Carr’s argument in The Shallows: How The Internet Is Changing The Way We Think, Read And Remember that “the linear, literary mind” is being destroyed by scanning, skim-reading and clicking. My eyes and mind roam unstoppablyover a smooth screen. With books I retain older, better habits. I pay attention. I savour.

An e-reader may have sufficient memory to store 3,500 books, but where are the memories that real books bring? When I gaze at my bookshelves – and yes, I gaze at my bookshelves – I get almost as much pleasure from reminiscing about who gave or recommended each book to me, where they were bought, on which holidays, with which friends, where and when I first read them and so spirit-restoringly on. Can you do that with e-books? I don’t think so. Don’t you see? They’re eroding our very humanity!

I love books, but I loathe e-readers