We have come a long way from printing presses and cave paintings; as always, no one can predict the future of technology, especially when it comes to books.

E-readers haven’t made books necessarily obsolete. There are still plenty of people who love the way a real book feels in their hands.

E-readers have a lot of great things to offer readers and shouldn’t be pushed aside. I’ll admit, it’s kind of nice to read embarrassing titles like “Twilight” and The Vampire Diaries books without judging eyes.

Sigh. I’m a sucker for romance and vampires.

There are other ways in which an E-reader can be beneficial.

Cost Effective

Every semester, it never fails that I end up with a daunting list of books to buy. I’m horrified to see the final price tag of the books by the time I’m finished. It’s easy to spend $500 in a semester on books, but an e-reader can help deter that cost, especially if purchasing classic books.

Project Gutenberg is a website that has more than 42,000 free books, and most of them are timeless classics. The website is Gutenberg.org and everything is legal to download because the copyright of the books have expired, allowing the readers access to the materials.

“At first, when e-readers came out, I was apprehensive, because I love the feel of books,” senior English major Nicole Rutan said. “Now, it is so convenient to have one. I buy my school books with it and it is way cheaper.”

Convenient Solution

Quite often, our schedules don’t work out as planned and we can have four classes back to back. That only means that our backpacks will be ripping at the seams by the amount of books we carry around.

At 22, my bookshelf is starting to become overwhelming. It’s a disheveled mess with books thrown about haphazardly without any order. I can rarely find what I’m looking for, but the e-reader conveniently categorizes or alphabetizes my books for me.

Maybe one day I will be motivated enough to organize my books on the shelf. Until then, I can be content knowing there’s a device doing the work for me.

An e-reader offers a solution by conveniently giving us ample space to download our books onto one lightweight device. Textbooks have also recently been included on the e-reader market–which means no more back pain, and I can carry around cute purses to class.

Who would win in an epic battle between e-books and print books? It seems that it would be a tie.

Reading is purely situational. I use e-books for classes, but I still want to curl up on the couch with a real book, and nothing can replace that new book smell.