If you are Chinese or eat at a lot of Chinese restaurants then you know that this is the Year of the Horse.  On the other hand, if you like to curl up in a corner next to a crackling fire with one of our favorite pastimes then you know this is the Year of the Book.

 Books are getting to be strange things.  Not the New York Times best sellers, which as far as we can tell is every book that is ever released.   And not the autobiographies of every politician, actor, singer, and fashion designer, which a far as we can tell as long as there are ghost writers willing to be paid for pretending to be someone else there will always be autobiographies of those never heard of before their autobiographies came out.  No, those books aren’t strange.  Well, they are but they have always been so there’s not much new there.

Books are getting to be strange things because they keep on showing up at book stores that the Internet pundits have said would all be disappearing this year for the past five years.  Even among the virtual market flood with e-readers, tablets, and reader apps for smart phones (one has to be pretty desperate to try to read an entire book on a phone), books, real books with actual covers and pages are still being bought enough that there are still bookstores even after the Internet pundits said there shouldn’t be.

When recently asked on a news show, authors and critics alike preferred a real book to read even though those polled had reader devices also.  There is no question that the e-reader is the frequent traveler’s best friend for reading material.  With hundreds of books available on a single unit, one never has to worry what genre to read this evening.  Packing one e-reader is certainly much more convenient than packing a modest 3 or 4 books.  But for sitting in comfy chair next to a crackling fire there is nothing like the feel, the smell, and the heft of a real hard cover book.

Some books you just can’t replace electronically.  The best selling book of all time is still the Bible in all its various versions.  Something you never see is an abridged Bible.  We suppose the Eight Commandments just doesn’t have the same ring as the original.  Though one may not find an abridged Bible they do get smaller and smaller.  Smaller type and thinner pages have taken pounds off the venerable tome.

Everybody should have a couple of classics.  Even if you don’t opt for the leather binding you’ll be hard pressed to really enjoy the art of reading a classic Twain, Poe, or one of the Bronte sisters in an electronic reader.

Other books that aren’t going anywhere electronically are the Idiot’s Guide and the For Dummies series.  These are still going great guns.  We figure it’s because they are easy to hide when company is coming over.  In a reader they are there for all to see.  There are so many of them and more keep coming out every year.  We wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t an Idiot’s Guide to e-Readers.  Soon we expect to see an Idiot’s Guide for Dummies.

One book that seems to have been lost to modern technology is the road atlas.  It wasn’t too many years ago that half of all cars had one shoved under a seat, tucked into a seat back pocket, or tossed into the trunk.  Now with GPS units, GPS phone apps, and turn-by-turn directions from satellite provides the atlas is becoming extinct.  Yet if you just want an idea of a couple different ways to get from New York to Miami it’s difficult to think of a more useful book.

So there you have it, our Year of the Book.  And regardless of what the Internet pundits have to say, we expect many more years to follow.

That’s what we think.  Really.  How ’bout you?