Composition Number 1398 - The History of Books

The media is full of death of the book scare stories. It seems that the Kindle will take over and that the printed book is dead. How often have we heard that in the last 615 years or so I wonder.
As I grew up, which I am still doing, a marker of who you were included which books you had on the shelf. A collection of Jane Austin novels indicated that you might just be a romantic, a collection of Percy Thrower books indicated that you may have been interested in gardening in the old days before your parents died and anything by Stephen Hawkins or that Irish novelist who wrote those big books about lighthouses which no has ever gotton to the end of meant that you were just out to impress.
I have a theory about Kindle versus the big books. It goes like this. If you are reading a book with a cover, everyone knows what you are looking at. Unless you disguise that copy of Nuts with the final print of The Dandy it's generally fine and says something like "look at me, aren't I an intellectual, I read complicated books with big titles".
When you read Kindle however, no one has the slightest idea what you have in front of you! It could be Dickens or some porn novel like 50 shades of something. No one can see except you.
Now where's the fun in that?