Tuesday, August 18, 2009

I remain unconvinced

Whilst I was away I heard a piece about the rise of the e-reader. e-readers are meant to be the future replacing the humble book.

What prompted this was the imminent arrival in the UK of Amazon's Kindle to the UK to join Sony's e-reader. They are small they are portable, you can store 2-300 e-books on a reader and stick books on SD cards. You can free up lots of space! oh and battery life seems ok.

Sony only has 57,000 titles available whereas Amazon in the US has 190,000. Books cost about a fiver.

It sounds great you can go on holiday and have a nice choice in case you read more than you expect or change your mind and it takes up less space . Now this is all very well but I forsee a few problems. I have a collection of a few thousand books I don't want to buy them again, if its raining I can't really get my e-book wet (a few damp pages? so what) and then occasionally I drop a book, whoops. Of course there is the pure tactile joy of a boook, the cover art, the smell.

Oh don't get me wrong e-readers are the future but this is one area I want to remain as a luddite.

6 comments:

Jan said...

I don't read much these days but can see where you are coming from. However, I think we should do all we can to stop chopping down the trees to make paper. So I would be all for the e-books.

Tricia Ryder said...

Yes I agree that it would be very convenient to carry about an e-book but not pleasurable to read at all. Another screen to look at.....

There's something so tactile about a book; the pleasure of opening the first page; the layout of the pages and any illustrations; the typeface used and the anticipation of turning the next page - just curling up with a real paper book.......

oldcrow61 said...

Me too...luddite! A friend of mine has an e-reader and is always singing its praise. Not for me thanks!

Janine said...

I agree Pete. I might be a bit old fashioned this way but I hate to rely on gadgets for everything. I would hate to be stuck on a three hour flight with nothing to do because the reader/ipod/whatever ran out of charge. I carry a "real" book on all my trips for this reason.
Jan- thats what the used book store is for!!! plus its cheaper.

Anonymous said...

As Tricia says, there's the screen... the glare is probably less good for eyes than printed pages.

At the end of the day you want to get away from the computer, not take a computery object to bed!

When I'm not well (like with flu), books slip from my grasp easily.

And the market for second hand books is good... they bring in money for charity shops and at church coffee mornings. Take that away, and you take away a source of funds.

Mo said...

I was going to add the same as diddums - I would imagine you would get eyestrain from the screen.

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