Welcome to She-Writes members on the Blog Hop. Sorry if you are not from the UK and the TV programmes I mention in this post are a mystery to you.....

I was un-surprised to hear Claire Balding say on My Life in Books on BBC2 that the physical presence of a book really matters to her. She held up an old gold-tooled tome of "The Myths of Greece and Rome" and asked her fellow guest to sniff it, which he duly did.

And in another episode of the programme Giles Coren talked about how he read from his father's edition of "The Great Gatsby" at his funeral and clearly the fact that it was that particular edition was very important to him.

For me the books that matter to me are inseparable from their covers because I pick up and put down that book umpteen times whilst reading it. I have the opportunity each time I handle it for the cover to go into my subconscious mind, and become indelibly associated with the story.

Each time someone mentions "Jane Eyre" I have a very specific edition in mind - the one my grandma gave me which was in a blue leather binding with a red sewn-in silk bookmark. It was a birthday gift and I treasured it. And if you were to say "Wolf Hall" then it's the black version, not the white.

When I go on review sites such as Goodreads I get irritated if I can't find the right edition of the book I want to review. Which probably explains why, now that I have a Kindle, I have mostly ignored it and gone out and bought the real book instead. I am still more attracted by the actual book itself in a shop than the virtual book, even though the latter may be cheaper.

You would think that now I am moving house I would have learnt my lesson and be a grand supporter of the virtual revolution - here are about half the boxes which are packed with my books ready to move house. And I'm afraid there are more boxes upstairs. And some books I can't bear to pack until the last minute, because I might need them for the research I'm doing at the moment. (By the way, the blur at bottom right is the cat running to escape being boxed with everything else.)
For me books are furniture as well as entertainment. They are my chosen wall-ornament, and I enjoy looking at the nice row of colourful spines and interesting typefaces. For me a room is unfurnished unless it has at least one bookcase. Someone told me it was a rather pompous way of displaying your education and ridiculously middle-class. But putting my Kindle on the coffee table just won't do.
And I'm so glad that I was able to give my daughter the hardback of my first novel - and hope in time it will be an heirloom of some curiosity value. In fact people are predicting that first edition hardbacks will be a very good investment in the future when digital books are the norm.
At Christmas I still wrapped books for my sister even though she has an e-reader. You can't unwrap a digital book and it does not have the same concrete presence. There is just something about the physicality of books.