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On one side you have the purists, those who think books are meant to be read on real paper made from real trees cut down by big burly men with beards. They speak of the smell of the book and the texture of delicately embossed covers.
On the other side you have early adopting gadget-a-holics. They're the folks who don't mind sacrificing a little bit of the romance of holding and smelling a book for the convenience of not hauling it around to the beach, airport or doctor’s office.
-- Jason F. Wright at The Desert News
I use to be a little loud in favor of the real paper and real trees, but this was before we got our first Kindle. I must blush. For me, not only are e-readers easy to handle, but they make book-blogging easier. I can even set the little rectangle Kindle next to my laptop to type something from it. With my poor eyes, it is also no small benefit to have easy control over the size of the print.
One disadvantage of e-readers: I don't like how I can no longer readily guage how many pages are left in a chapter or a section, or to be able to readily flip from one section to another. It may be that I am just not used to using the tools that presumably enable one to do this, but I don't seem to be getting used to using these tools.
Does this mean that I no longer really care about real books at all? Hardly. When it comes to a book that I know I am going to want to reread a number of times over the years, I definitely want a good old-fashioned hard copy. But let's face it: most books are one-time wonders, if I even care to finish reading them in the first place.
On the other side you have early adopting gadget-a-holics. They're the folks who don't mind sacrificing a little bit of the romance of holding and smelling a book for the convenience of not hauling it around to the beach, airport or doctor’s office.
-- Jason F. Wright at The Desert News
I use to be a little loud in favor of the real paper and real trees, but this was before we got our first Kindle. I must blush. For me, not only are e-readers easy to handle, but they make book-blogging easier. I can even set the little rectangle Kindle next to my laptop to type something from it. With my poor eyes, it is also no small benefit to have easy control over the size of the print.
One disadvantage of e-readers: I don't like how I can no longer readily guage how many pages are left in a chapter or a section, or to be able to readily flip from one section to another. It may be that I am just not used to using the tools that presumably enable one to do this, but I don't seem to be getting used to using these tools.
Does this mean that I no longer really care about real books at all? Hardly. When it comes to a book that I know I am going to want to reread a number of times over the years, I definitely want a good old-fashioned hard copy. But let's face it: most books are one-time wonders, if I even care to finish reading them in the first place.
