I have to second this from my own experience. Until recently, the number of books I was reading per year had also started to inscreased, due in large part to the fact that an ever-growing portion of my daily reading was taking place on the Internet. I found it difficult to concentrate on books, and I was constantly reaching for my phone in the middle of a reading session to check Facebook or my blog visits. A few months ago, though, I received a Kindle as a birthday present, and I've managed to regain my appreciation for longform reading. It was a bit of a process at first - I had a tendency to jump from book to magazine to book and back again. However, I think it was that jumping back and forth - the way I do on the web - that let me transition from the ephemeral reading of the web back to more luxurious book reading.

I regained my capacity for long-term reading, and rediscovered the joy of losing myself in a book. And to keep it that way, I make sure to set aside time every week to leave my computer, turn off my phone, and just focus on a book. One nice feature of the Kindle is that you can load music onto it, which allows me to drown out the outside world that much easier. It's heavenly. Especially when I pair my reading time with a good scotch.

In my mind, the great virtue of the Kindle and other e-readers is the fact that they're dedicated devices with few features. I use my Kindle to read, and to play music while I read -- that's it. That lack of features makes it easy to focus on reading and hard to get distracted. Which is why I'm glad I have a dedicated e-reader rather than a tablet. I can't imagine that I'd have been able to learn to love books again if I could be so easily distracted by email and the web and games. Which is why I fervently hope that in their quest to make an iPad killer, Amazon doesn't leave dedicated e-readers behind.