I've probably read about 9.5/10 of the last books on a kindle. I think the format is perfect because of several factors: 1. for books I read through once and

I've probably read about 9.5/10 of the last books on a kindle. I think the format is perfect because of several factors: 1. for books I read through once and never actively reference again, or very seldomly 2. I don't have to wait for the paperback to come out 3. I don't have the eye strain of reading on an ipad or my phone 4. For a large majority of my purchases it doesn't make sense to own a physical copy of the book. It seems like it would be a hassle to own and carry and take up space. (also see #2) 5. a kindle is light and cheap enough that I don't have to stress too much about breaking it or leaving it somewhere or it being conspicuous to have out in public However, the kindle fails at some important things: It's not in color, so it doesn't do well for books that are image heavy (even in black and white) - the display is a little too small and any images in the book tend to look terrible for some reason (even though the supposed dpi is relatively high) -which brings me to your point, that in general I find that phones, tablets and kindles are not particularly good at replicating the browsing experience of a certain kind of book. I don't think all books fall into this category, but some important ones do and I can't imagine not having a physical copy for that reason. The last one that comes to mind for me is Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software. I like browsing through all of his examples and diagrams and flipping back and forth through the different parts that interrelate to each other. I've never found an electronic browsing experience that was as good as a physical book. (unless I was at the point of wanting to implement some formal system of organizing and linking my ideas, in which case I think a computer would be preferable) The kindle particularly fails at this experience, as an integrated piece of hardware / software it's merely competent and has a lot of rough edges. It's not as seamlessly integrated in the way iphones (for example) are.