Some of my most vivid and pleasant childhood memories are from the books I read. I can easily remember characters, plot details and even the setting of a lot of books.

I think this has a lot do with the brain being actively engaged in the reading, therefore being “burned” into your memory bank forever. Television, on the other hand, is a passive activity where the use of your own imagination is severely limited.

Music is also a lot like reading. I associate different phases of my life with the music I listened to at the time. For example, my college years are painted with the gritty music of the Grateful Dead.

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The biggest reason I hear people use for resisting ebooks is that they like real books. They like the feel of a real book when the hold it. They like turning the pages of a real book. They even like the smell of a real book.

All those reasons are very superficial.

Ebooks, just like printed books, are only the medium that the content reaches us. The story and characters do not change if you read a novel in ebook format as opposed to print. The only difference is that you’re reading on a screen rather than paper.

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I’ve always guessed that the main demographic for those who read ebooks would be the younger crowd. You know, those who are tech-savvy, have a lot of disposable income and like to have the latest and greatest of all the gadgets out there.

Well, I’m wrong. It appears that ebook readers are a little older, at least according to one article.

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I have read enough novels and short stories over the years to be able to come up with a list of, what I believe, makes good fiction. The list I compiled has only 3 items on it, and you might be surprised by what I left out.

When I sat down to write this post, I wrote it specifically with the novel in mind. Short stories are an entirely different breed and require a slightly different way of analyzing them.

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Reading books was a large part of my childhood. My parents not only encouraged me to read, but also set a good example. To this day, I still have vivid memories of the books I read during my younger years.

One of those books I really enjoyed (and read multiple times) was Hatchet (aff link) by Gary Paulsen. In the novel, a young boy named Brian Robeson finds himself having to survive on his own in the Canadian wilderness after the pilot of the single-engine plane he’s flying suffers a fatal heart attack.

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First they said that big-box book retailers like Borders, Barnes & Noble and even Amazon will be the death of the independent bookstore. And to some extent, the prediction has come true. A lot of the indie booksellers have closed shop over the last decade or so.

Now they’re saying that ebooks will be the death of bookstores altogether. After all, who needs to actually go to a physical store when you can just buy an ebook with the click of your mouse?

If Jason Rovito has his way, the indie bookstore could make a comeback not just as a bookstore, but as a collective of booksellers, writers, publishers and writing and reading groups. When indie bookstores were closing down all around, Jason did the unthinkable, he opened up his own store, called Of Swallows, Their Deeds and The Winter Below.

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One habit I’ve retained since my early childhood is reading in bed before going to sleep. My parents instilled this habit in me, both by encouragement and example. I’m now at the point where if I don’t read before going to sleep I feel “off”, like my day has been skewed. The main benefit of reading right before bed is that it relaxes the mind without overstimulating like television does.

A good example of how reading relaxes the mind is that when I’m up late at night, I often listen to music while I work. The music gets me going and helps me stay awake. In other words, the music acts as a stimulant. Then, when I got to bed and read, I become more calm. I’m ready for sleep. No matter what I’m reading; action/adventure, literary fiction, mystery, science fiction – the effect is still the same.

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If you’re a Kindle 2 or a Kindle DX owner, then you can look forward to Amazon pushing out the Kindle firmware 2.5 very soon, and all of its new features. It’s unclear exactly when the update will be available, Amazon is hinting around the end of May. Regardless, the new features coming to a Kindle near you are bound to make you giddy with excitement.

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Amazon is not only tracking Kindle users highlighted passages, they are also advertising the fact. While this might make for an interesting study in what readers find important in a particular book, my big question is: Does this mean privacy should be compromised?

I first saw this story on Mediabistro, which gave a rather simplistic, non critical post of this new Amazon practice. I did a quick Google search and found another, more critical article from Bnet Amazon risks Kindle sales by tracking, reporting what readers highlight. This fact that Amazon is now tracking your ebook highlights begs other questions: What else are they tracking? What about annotated comments?

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My local bookstore held a book signing for 3 authors last weekend. It drew a sizeable crowd and there’s no doubt a lot of books were sold to customers anxiously seeking an autograph from their favorite author/s.

I’ll confess, I’m a literary autograph hound myself. I have a small collection of autographed books (a collection I hope to expand). There is something about having an author sign his/her own work that makes owning that book like a trophy – as hokey as that sounds.

But with ebooks rapidly growing in popularity, what’s going to happen to author signings? After all, I wouldn’t want an author to sign my Sony Pocket Edition. As popular as ebooks have become, and as their popularity will continue to rise, I still think there will be a spot for print books in the literary marketplace.

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