ebooks vs. real pages

I'm still stuck between e-books and real books.  For all the convenience, portability, and, of course, no storage space of ebooks, I still like the feel of paper, of dog-earring pages, and flipping back to recall whether I remembered the story right.  Ebooks are good for the books that are good reads, but not real keepers that I feel I need to store on my shelves forever.  But real books are so much easier to lend or share with a friend.  And what else am I going to do with all these bookmarks and name plate stickers?

On our recent family vacation, I carried along a copy of Helen Oyeyemi's Mr. Fox on my iPad, along with a dozen or so other books, and two paperback books in my suitcase.  I generally don't like reading two books at a time, I get easily confused about which character and plot line belonged to which story, but I do make the rare exception.  In this case, I read my ebook while on the plane.  Then I switched to the paperback when I got out to the pool and the beach.

Why this distinction?  Take a look at my paperback - a true "beach read".

It survived a couple rides on the lazy river tube ride at the hotel and a couple days lounging on the beach.  The pages are wrinkled with pool water and interlaced with sand and salt.  Can you imagine what this would do to my iPad?

My daughter, on the other hand, is obviously, a better keeper of e-books.  That's all she carried - plane, beach, pool, dinner, laying in the bed.

My husband, the tech-y, is sure that eventually I will forego the real books and read everything on a nook or Kindle.  Has this man not noticed that I still have a film SLR camera on the shelf?