Paper over Pixels

Ebooks are convenient.

They’re cheaper, lighter, and available in seconds.

Still… they’re just not for me.

I don’t want to read a story on the same device where I check messages, scroll, and get distracted every five minutes. My brain already associates screens with noise and hurry. Reading, for me, is supposed to feel slower than the rest of life. I don’t want to tap or swipe to move through a story. I want to turn a page. There’s something about holding a physical book that makes the experience feel real. The weight of it is in my bag. The quiet sound of pages shifting. The way it doesn’t glow or buzz, just waits for me to open it. And nothing, nothing, beats the smell of a new book.

That soft, inky, papery smell when you open it for the first time. It’s the smell of a story that hasn’t been touched yet. An ebook can give me the words, but it can’t give me that feeling. I also love seeing how far I’ve come just by looking at the pages. The stack of read pages growing thicker on the left, the unread ones getting thinner on the right — it’s such a small thing, but it feels so satisfying. I can see my progress. I can feel the journey in my hands. A percentage bar on a screen just doesn’t hit the same way.

Ebooks store stories, but physical books store memories.

I remember where I was when I read certain books because I can see the exact copy sitting on my shelf. Some have folded corners. Some have lines I underlined when a sentence meant too much. Some still have random receipts or bits of paper tucked inside like little time capsules.

A physical book doesn’t run out of battery. It doesn’t pull me away from the moment. It lets me disconnect from everything else and be fully inside one world at a time.

Reading, to me, isn’t just about finishing a story. It’s about slowing down, being present, and letting a story stay with me even after I close it. Paper makes that possible in a way screens never have.

So no, I don’t do ebooks.

I do smell the new pages.

I do the growing stack of pages on the left.

I do bookmarks, dog-eared corners, and stories I can hold in my hands.

I think you can tell by now…if there are sticky notes and tabs, it means the book understood you — and parts of life you could never quite put into words.

Sneha 

-The English Book Depot

A Reader's Pace

I don't usually read one book at a time.

There's almost always a small pile beside me—some books open, some half-read, some simply waiting. 

Somewhere along the way, we started believing that reading only counts if a book is finished. As if the last page is proof that the experience mattered. As if anything unfinished is incomplete. But most readers know—that's rarely how it actually works.

During one of our Brewing Knowledge Sessions at EBD, during a meet-and-greet with Ratna Manucha, this very idea surfaced naturally. We spoke about how reading doesn't have to mean committing to one book at a time. Reading can be layered. It can involve many books at once, each serving a different purpose.

Many of us read multiple books at once. One for comfort. One for curiosity. One, we keep telling ourselves we'll finish soon. Some days, we reread the same few pages because they feel familiar, and almost like returning to a thought we don't want to let go of. Other days, we feel stuck in a book because we aren't in the right headspace for it. And sometimes, a completely new book catches our attention. We pick it up, read a few pages, just enough to understand its voice, and then quietly place it back, or they're meant to be carried. Nestled in your bag, against a notebook or water bottle, like a quiet companion with no demands.

Leaving books half-read isn't a failure. Neither is switching between them, nor pausing midway. Reading isn't a race, and it certainly isn't a checklist.

Reading is slow and time-consuming.

But even then—even like this—it counts.

Sneha 

- Intern at The English Book Depot