These are days of digital. Yet sales of books seem healthy to me each time I visit a bookstore.

There are almost endless types, content and styles. Each one gives sensory pleasure in the colours, the smell of new paper and ink, the feel of paper.

I was an early convert to computers. Around the time of the first PC I was the second person in the company that employed me to have a desktop computer — green font on a dark screen, floppy disks to store data, an Olivetti rather than what became the ubiquitous IBM. It was a beautiful, European design.

Now smart phones outdo those early PCs. Images on screens instead of pure monochrome text. The Internet is the source of so much knowledge, even the manuals for the apps we use. Anyone remember the multi-page books about Wordstar?

Yet books and magazines survive. The multi-sensory experience is one benefit. Long live books!