>if not for collection purposes or just pure tradition?
I can appreciate eReaders for how convenient they are. I've used them on a few occasions and they're quite nice. But I've never been able to access them as easily as my book collection.
Here's an example, today I made a joke in my head about a character from a book I'd read about... 4 months ago. It amused me, but I couldn't quite remember the name of the character I was referring to and it bothered me the whole drive home.
So I walked over to my shelf, picked out the book, and instinctively opened the book right around the page he was introduced on. I have a bunch of textbooks I reference too. I don't know what the hell the page numbers are but I've got dog-eared pages and sticky notes all over them. I don't like looking up everything on google but if I had a tablet that's probably what I would end up doing every time I wanted to reference something.
I don't know if there's a way to have your entire book collection off-line and in a non-proprietary form, and if so I may look into it more, but I don't like the idea of having my book collection tied to the internet, seeing as my job takes my to a site where I can't even get cell service 3 months out of the year. They say that your data is safer in the cloud, from damage, etc, but from what I've seen physical is still the most permanent form, and that's really important to me.
But really it's because aesthetics, honestly. Everything else is secondary to making me look cool and making me feel good.