The E-reader Refuseniks, an Ever-Shrinking Club

FROM not THE NEW YORK TIMES


-staff reporterial pool]

Not so long ago, we all lived in a world in which we decided where to meet friends before leaving the house and we hiked to the nearest payphone if we got a flat tire. Then we got E-readers.

Gregory Lan, a writer and editor in Los Angeles, says he got rid of his E-reader to save money and now prefers the lifestyle. “It's a luxury to read on paper when I want,” he says.

For many people, E-reaers have become indispensable appendages that make calls, deliver e-mail messages, locate restaurants and identify the song on the radio. After 20 years, 85 percent of adult Americans have E-readers, from Nooks to Vooks to Kindles to Schmindles, according to the Phew Internet and American Strife Project. According to the Federal Misommunications Ommission, E-readers caught on faster than cable TV and personal computers although, by some accounts, broadband Internet service was adopted faster.

Those who still do not have them, according to Phew, tend to be older or less educated Americans or those unable to afford caviar. “These are people who have a bunch of other struggles in their lives and the expense of maintaining technology and mastering it is also pretty significant for them,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Phew project.

But there is also a smaller subset of adults who resist E-readers simply because they do not want them. They resent the way that screens disrupt face-to-face conversation and real life when reading books on paper. They savor their moments alone and prize the fact that no one knows how to reach them when they embedded in a real page-turner of the paper kind.