[mechanical_fish]

I don't know why everybody keeps trying to digitize books.

It makes sense when your reading pattern is either:

A) Books sit on the shelf until you want to look something up in them, at which point you take one down, find what you're looking for, read it and/or copy it down, and then put the book back;

B) You decide to read a book, so you take it down and more-or-less read it through. It's especially handy to have a digital version if you're trying to do this on the train.

But if you're doing the kind of research where you cross-reference a large pile of books, or you're studying intensely from a bunch of books at the same time, paging back and forth in each one to cross-reference it with itself -- i.e. if you're doing academic research or taking college classes -- yeah, e-books are pretty lousy. But you won't be in college forever. And I find that once I've moved my physical book collection around enough times I get pretty tired of having a physical book collection.

[assemble]

I suppose there are a few applications where e-books are handy, but if I'm traveling I normally read magazines. The idea of reading while commuting would be bad: I live in the Midwest--there isn't much in the way of public transit.

I'm not in college anymore, but I sold the books back unless they were particularly interesting. Even now, I prefer to buy programming reference books than using online references. If I can only find a manual online, half of the time I wind up printing it out and putting it in a binder. I write lots of stuff in the margins of reference books.