My favorite place to read is Julia’s Café. They have good coffee, some snacks, and they sell used books. I have bought a few books from them over the past few months. A few short story collections—one authored by Stephen King, one collected by King, and one titled The Dog by Jack Livings, and about six or seven others. My fiancé, Courtney, bought me a big bookcase for my birthday. A case that will hold at least a couple hundred books. Since Julia’s sells used books for $2 or so, I can fill the thing quickly.

I do not buy new books from stores like Barnes and Noble. They are expensive and they don’t smell or feel good. Whenever I can, I buy books that smell like a library and have yellow pages. I like books with pages that are dingy and worn. I bought a few secondhand books by Cheever from a used book store close to my house. All three of them were in good shape and smelled even better. Age appears to improve many things—books being one of them.

Aged books have a faint vanilla scent with an underlying must. Sometimes they smell a little grassy. Digital books are hot and smell like burning fuel. They scorch your eyes and your hands. Again and again, I have to take headache medicine when I read from my iPad. Reading on this bright contraption is like staring directly at the sun in July.

I tried audiobooks once. Amazon gave me a 30-day trial. So, while I drove to Illinois a few weeks ago, I listened to Stephen King and CS Lewis. The audiobook didn’t smell like paper or ink or glue. There isn’t enough Adderall in a prescription to keep my attention on an audiobook. I’d rather not do that again.

Technology thinks it can fix books. Books do not need fixing any more than a brand new car needs to be rebuilt. A book is not a Ford Pinto. I do not need a book delivered from space directly to my phone. Some shitty space book! What’s the point of having a thousand books on your iPad? You cannot read them all at once. A gleaming heap of refuse that can deliver a migraine from a radiation tower set in the middle of a cornfield. If that’s an improvement, then I’m Peter fucking Pan.

I’ll keep my books. I’ll keep my bookcase. No bleeding liver from the ibuprofen. None of that. I’ll carry a book with me to work or when I make that execrable trip to the DMV every eight years on my birthday. Cause that would be a joy—a double headache—the person who hates their life more than my dog hates a bath hands me permission to drive my Volkswagen while I stare at the sun.