And it’s not just that the entire eBook market is beset with ridiculous proprietary formats, clunky readers and expensive texts being pushed by companies whose only knowledge of books is a hazy memory of drawing moustaches on sperms in science class. Even Amazon, which built an empire on the blighters, seems to have forgotten why we love them – digital texts cost more than paperbacks, you can’t share them and its reader looks as if it were built in 1893 and runs on steam. Amazon, quite contrary to its claims, doesn’t have an eBook strategy so much as a series of really bad ideas all lined up in a row.

But even then, when all these problems are eventually solved – and they will be, because even a blind squirrel finds an acorn eventually – it still won’t make a damn bit of difference to my feelings. Yes, you can rabbit on about convenience, and having every single book on the planet in the palm of your hand. But a book is about more than just the words on the page. A book is the entire experience, from walking into the bookstore itself, to reading it and passing it onto a friend.

For proof, just look at the enraptured expressions of shoppers next time you walk into Waterstones or the Oxfam book shop. Shopping for books is a pleasure, people dawdle over them, they roll them around in their hands. They read the blurb on the back, flick through the pages, linger on random sentences. They smile. A book is an event, but eBooks dilute this event to mere words. They strip out the feeling, the sensation, the experience that surrounds a novel. They make it – soulless – machine like.

I think eBooks probably have their place. Manuals, technical books, maybe even schoolbooks would undoubtedly benefit from a technological overhaul. As I remember, the sheer weight of textbooks that accompanied me during my A Levels made every day purgatory and I’m sure more than a few teenagers would be delighted to have that weight replaced by a reader jangling in their pocket.

But not me. I love books. I love technology. But in this case, I’m convinced the two are better off apart.