What good are e-books? What good are cheap paperbacks?

Here's something that won't happen when you read an e-book: the pages wont break apart, crumple, deteriorate in your hands. I love the feeling of holding a book and of reading print on white paper and of gauging my progress as I move through a long volume, all of which would be abandoned if I were ever to switch to e-books (or if the switch is made without my acquiescence, as seems to be the case). Yet many of the books in my collection are really old - and cheap. When I was a grad student or a young professor and always trying to build my library I scouted out a lot of books in garage sales and library sales, and as a result a lot of my older books, the classics, are cheap editions, very old, sometimes with someone else's scribble and notes and highlights. Those, I have more or less discarded - have no desire for that kind of distraction when reading a good book. But some of the others - it's kind of discouraging. Within the past year I re-read Updike's Museums & Women, loving every page as it literally fell apart in my hands and I had to toss it away. Re-read Toomer's Cane, and the old glue binding just snapped in half, then into quarters. Recently read through for the first time Malamud's The Magic Barrel, again an act of disintegration that, I think, took away some of the pleasure I might have had in a newer edition - tossed it when through. Last night started re-reading Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd, and the pages are yellowed and fragile - wasn't enjoying the novel much and wonder if it had anything to do with the condition of the book. If I pursue it farther, will be in a library edition or newly purchased pb. E-books may have a role in life after all (or at least high-quality pbs) - and maybe the old pb's have an evolutionary function as well, encouraging us to recycle, ecologically and intellectually.