You can't curl up with a good wireless device

I'm just going to put it out there: I am TOTALLY the wrong person to write this column. To wit:

1. I work part time at The King's English Bookshop in Salt Lake City.

2. I ALWAYS give books as presents. In fact, sometimes I get mixed up and give the same book to the same person twice. Once I gave the same person the same book three times. In the same year.

3. Books breed like rabbits (also lost socks) at my house. Every time I turn around, there's another pile of paperbacks! (MEMO TO BOOKS: Come on, you guys. Give it a rest.)

4. I have even attempted to write books of my own.

Here are a few more reasons why I shouldn't be writing this column:

1. I am pretty hopeless with technology.

2. Which is why (how sad is this?) I don't know how to turn on the TV downstairs.

3. Which is why I fake it.

4. Which is why I go into the kitchen and act all busy and say, "Hey, can someone turn the game on for me?"

(Speaking of which, none of my boys has figured out that I can't turn on the TV yet and THEY NEVER WILL because none of my boys reads this column. Which has turned out to be a big blessing in my life! And their lives, too!)

Anyway.

All this talk of books and technology brings me to the topic du jour, i.e. the Kindle.

The Kindle, as you know, is a wireless reading device that allows a person to download reading material, so that she or he doesn't have to touch an actual book.

Friends of mine who use Kindle say it's great, especially on trips, and all I can say is yes, but don't you miss the feel and heft of a book in your hands?

Does a Kindle invite you to bury your nose in it so you can get a good hit of paper perfume?

Can you stare at that Kindle sitting on your shelf there and remember the day you bought it off the rack at a drugstore in a half-deserted mall in Pomona, Calif.?

And how you sat outside on a bench and read it because you were waiting for your dad?

Who didn't show up for hours?

Because he was trying to persuade kids to leave the beaches of Southern California to play football in the mountains of Utah?

Which meant you had time to get into a story about short men with hairy feet who live in Middle Earth?

Which is THE LAST STORY IN THE WORLD YOU'D EVER THOUGHT YOU'D WANT TO READ?

Can a Kindle do that for you?

I realize that like it or not, we live in an online world.

We gather information online, we scrapbook online, we socialize online.

And. There. Is. No. Going. Back.

But please, don't expect me to stop loving books — not only for their stories but also for physical selves.

e-mail: acannon@desnews.com