It’s been popular in the past Internet-dominated decade to insist that books will always have a place in our lives. They’re comfortable, they’re easy, they’re oh so loveable.

This is crap. Books are not comfortable. I was tired of holding them open by the age 10. And what if you’re stuck on a Chinatown night bus with no lights? Good luck with that book, Encyclopedia Brown.

Physical shortcomings aside, what I find most bizarre is the popular non-fiction category. Who is buying these books, and why? Most are several hundred pages about a topic that ought be treated in several thousand words.

I’ve read only one non-fic book in its bloated entirety. My parents foisted Get a Financial Life on me. (Nice, huh?) To my surprise, it was of great value. I skimmed it non-stop — is there any other way?—and learned something. Of course, this still should have been a thousand word affair, and I never would have bought it for myself.

In the midst of memoir-gate, the public should ask itself: “Why do I insist on reading true lies (not the novelization of the Schwarzenegger movie) and puffed up preaching-to-the-choir arguments?” Books like Frey’s, or Jimmy Carter’s useless Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis, should never have been written. Stop buying them!

Simple economics is of course what keeps this silly business going. People trust ideas more if they’ve paid for them to be delivered in a certain amount of pulp, and fast typing writers (or armies of ghostwriters) are happy to oblige.

This is all getting very personal for me as my company’s “book” is now at the printers. We’re e-mail, we’re different, we’re fast, but gosh-darnit, this is going to get us a hell of a lot of money and—more importantly—exposure. And it’s a good book. Blah blah blah. I get all that, but I can’t help thinking that it’s a lame way to connect to the unconnected masses (or that it’s lame to even try… oops).

Even Internet-obsessed open source programmers can’t resist the allure of turning out puff-filled how-to books with randomly dressed up dandies on the covers. After all, they should be rewarded in some way for their labors. I agree, but I think the Manning books are quite literally a travesty.

I take comfort knowing that something like the iTunes Music Store is hiding behind the next page. Record companies don’t like that albums cost $10 there, but there isn’t much they can do about it. Publishers and authors won’t like that their ideas are only worth $5 and 2,000 words, but I’ll sure be happy to spend less money on better writing. It’s coming.

Good God, y’all.