It may well be that "forgoing physicality, readers of e-books defraud themselves of the communion which emerges from that physicality." He thinks that smelly books further that communion. I have always found that this particular physicality is standing in the way of any kind of "communion," but I may well be idiosyncratic here.[1] Mind you, I like--no love--books, but there is nothing wrong with electronic books either. I love them as well. He just seems to think they are very useful when traveling.[1]
But there is one point where I find he is just wrong:
Cram your home with books, and you’re lovingly called a collector; cram it with old newspapers, and you’re derisively called a hoarder. But be honest: The collector is a hoarder, too—a discriminating and noble-minded hoarder, perhaps, but a hoarder just the same.What is the genus and what is the species? Are all hoarders collectors or are all collectors hoarders? One might be tempted to argue that it's either the one or the other, but I would like to resist that temptation. I would want to argue that a hoarder "collector" in the relevant sense. "Collection" has many meanings, of course. Just think of the "garbage collector," or of the coffee grimes "collecting" in the drain. A "hoarder" is collecting things in that way, but a "collector" of books (or pencils) is discriminating. He selects according to some principle(s) what will become part of his collection and what won't. That this principle is not always conscious presents a problem, and it may lead to the collector becoming a hoarder, but it does not negate the difference. The collector is not a hoarder.
By the way, the same holds for "information" or knowledge. There are those who are or would describe themselves as information hoarders. See here and here, for instance.
1. There are many others, like markings with ball point pens or highlighter, crumbling spines, stains, for instance.
2. "The e-reader is a godsend to those travelers who want to carry all eight volumes of Gibbon with them. (Although you can question if a traveler would really make use of Gibbon’s dreadnought while traipsing through foreign climes."