Got to agree with you there Neal. My wife gave me a boxed set of the Aubrey/Maturin novels containing hardbacked omnibus editions of all 21 books in the series. Beautiful binding, tissue thin high grade paper and a built in ribbon book mark in each of the volumes. The sheer joy of holding it opening it, reading and turning those pages just adds enourmously to the pleasure of sitting down for a couple of hours (minutes usually for me these days), to read in a comfortable chair.
e-Books meh! I do enough electronic reading on the net!
I can see a use in relation to technical manuals say for airline pilots who normally have to carry huge breifcases around of paper manuals, but I'm sure there are pilots who would say the same and wouldn't want them in this format either.
Maybe for another generation...