It's real books for me every time. For a start there's something special in just being able to pick up the book and hold it in your hands, look at the loose cover, open it, check when it was first published and how many times it's been reprinted. Then there's often information about the author on the cover which serves to wet the appetite and draw you in to really wanting to read it straight away. If those first few lines are doing their job they hook you and draw you in. By the end of just the first one or two pages you are caught; you're dying to know more about that first character and what on earth is going to happen to them. If it's non-fiction, there is that thirst for knowledge, that eagerness to learn something new which makes you desperate to read further.
As I've got older I've found it increasingly more difficult to assimilate and retain facts as I read. It's therefore great to have the book in your possession; you can go back and re-read a sentence or a whole page as often as you like. You can dip into it next day, next month, whenever you like.
Once read, books for me can become valued possessions; something to keep and treasure.
Yes, it's reading for me every time.
