Interesting piece on the Telegraph from their Way With Words festival. It seems Penelope Lively has stoked (or kindled, as the headline writer joyously has it) the embers of the rumbling 'ebooks: angels or demons?' row with the claim that "anyone whose library consists of a Kindle lying on a table is some sort of bloodless nerd."

Admittedly, I will bow to no one in my reverence for Penelope Lively - The Ghost of Thomas Kempe is, in my view, one of the best books ever written for children; Moon Tiger surely one of the finest titles to take the Booker - but truly, her stance on Kindles only makes me love her the more. She is not, mark you, rejecting them outright - there are, she says, "two points at which I might use a Kindle: when travelling, though I don't do much of that any more, and when in hospital, which is quite likely to arise at some point." And I agree, of course - the practical applications of the devices are undeniable (we're currently reading submissions for the Guardian's First Book Award on the desk; having done my shoulder in lugging books back and forth between home and office, I'd've given a great deal for an ebook reader to take the strain). But as to keeping your library - the books you've loved and gathered to you - on a Kindle, I think "bloodless" sums it up perfectly. Where's the heart in having a library on a tablet? Where's the warmth?

On which note, here's David Barnett on the charm of battered books - and you can upload pictures of your own beat-up, sellotaped, coverless darlings to our trashed tomes flickr group. Mine - Three Men in a Boat and The Hobbit - are firmly on my to-be-saved-from-a-burning-building list. Let no one accuse me of bloodlessness.