World would be lost without books

Your recent front-page story (“E-books vs. suburban bookstores,” Jan. 15) was a sad observation of how today’s society embraces every technological breakthrough — for better or worse — so fast that we don’t think and question how simple things, such as turning pages of a book or that other solitary pleasure of sitting down with a pen to write a letter to a friend instead of e-mailing, are lost in the name of progress.

If we let these high-tech gadgets help abolish one of man’s oldest forms of communication, and in the end refer to the book as an antique that is no longer needed, we have no future.

I in the interim will continue to buy new/used books.

Frank Jerz

Park Ridge