Home > Technobuddy > Archives > 2006 > October > 30 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USDon’t make book on it
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
There are books in every room of my large house, including the bathrooms and kitchen. There are bookcases in most rooms. The bedroom looks like the aftermath of an explosion at a bookstore with books piled by both sides of the bed, on the night stands and piled in corners.
Some of them are books I will own forever, others are destined to become trade-ins at the used bookstore. When my wife and I travel about a fourth of one suitcase is filled with books.
On paper - no pun intended - my wife and I would be perfect candidates for one of the e-book devices. These gadgets can be loaded with electronic texts of books and try hard to be as book-like as possible in the way you use them.
If I learned to enjoy reading on one of these, some of the litter would be gone in my house and - when traveling - I could take what would amount to stacks of books along without filling a suitcase.
But - and maybe it’s my age - using these gadgets has never been satisfactory for me. I wonder if younger generations - folks who grew up reading online - will have a different attitude. (I also wonder if reading is becoming a lost art - but that’s a subject for another blog post).
There’s an interesting discussion on these readers (as well as a counter-point about the old fashioned printed book) here. A colleague passed it along in an e-mail this morning and now I’m passing it along to you.
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Comments
By Maria
October 30, 2006 10:08 AM | Link to this
I’m 26 and I got started with usenet and BBS when I was a young teenager, then got into Web journals (i.e. the blog’s ancestor) when I was 16. Today, I read many online magazines, blogs, and literary journals, but I still can’t imagine reading a book online. While I read many long articles online, I can’t say that I find experience particularly comfortable — my eyes get very dry, and I have to remind myself to blink. If I read more than a few long blog posts or articles at a time, I’ll invariably wind up with a headache. I’m dedicated enough to my favorite bloggers and columnists that I’ll read their stuff online, and I’m too much of an environmentalist to want to print out everything I read.
I think the Internet has brought book enthusiasts together more than it has turned people away from reading print material. I can think of a number of book blogs and discussion forums that have huge readerships. People catalogue their home libraries on Librarything.com. And places like Amazon and eBay make it easier for people to collect used and rare books. Amazon makes it so easy for me to find books I wouldn’t have known about before — their recommendations, and other users’ reviews and Listmania lists, have helped my “to-read” list grow to a truly monstrous length.
Every time I’m tempted to say something about the younger generation having a shorter attention span than my generation, I think of all those kids who stay up all night reading the latest Harry Potter book. Would they stay up all night reading a Harry Potter e-book? I’m not likely to, but maybe they are.
By Jesse's Girl
October 30, 2006 11:00 AM | Link to this
I agree 100%…reading has indeed become a lost art. I no longer visit my favorite literary haunts and witness people quietly, but passionately searching the stacks. No, I see them mentally flipping through the electronic pages of uploadable books or even books on CD. I fear that losing one’s self in an author’s world has gone the way of letter writing. Even my 70 year old grand mother emails me! This is why, for every Christmas and Hannukah that my family celebrates…..I give books. I try very hard to match up the recipient with a complimentary book. I want to see people reading on their lunch breaks…not catching up on emails or with a cell phone surgically attached to their ear. I want to see more parents develope and nurture a love of reading in their children! No….I shall never partake of the electronic reading devices on the market now. Somehow, it cheapens what all the literary greats have given us.
By sandeskimo
October 30, 2006 11:58 AM | Link to this
Paper takes an ancillary position in reading—ideas defy the medium. Books remain important to me, but I’m not married to the romantic notion that the reading experience belongs wholly to them. I love to read no matter if it comes in pixels or ink (or admittedly on CD). I have many books on my shelf and many books on my hard drive. The digital ones are either flat text files, PDFs, or some other proprietary file format; my paper books differ in size and quality.
Jesse’s Girl is right in that paper books enhance the experience of watching people read or sleuth after a suggested book title. I also agree that the tactile interaction with a book produces a warm happiness—not because of the tactile experience but because of impending activity of reading. Paper books also have some greater advantage for the eyes than computer screens as Maria stated.
If you think that you may want to try out reading e-books, first try this: I’m sure that you have a laptop. Load a few PDF books on it that you’re interested in reading. Try to read them. If you can’t read them on your laptop, you won’t be able to read them on a 5”x3” screen that most of the portable book readers offer.
As an aside, this is cool technology that doesn’t emit light, and hence, is easier on the eyes.
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=34 http://www.livescience.com/scienceoffiction/051026digitalnewspaper.html
By Bill
October 31, 2006 11:24 AM | Link to this
I enjoyed the thoughtful posts about e-books.
Sandeskimo is right, of course, in saying that ideas can transcend the way they are presented. A bad book is going to be bad on paper, or on the screen.
And I hope Maria is correct in thinking that the Internet has, on balance, been a plus for books and for readers.
I like the idea of e-books and truly wish that the experience of reading a book on a screen was just as enjoyable for me as reading the book on the printed page.
I’m not new to the idea of reading electronic text. Newsrooms were using terminals to read and write text long before personal computers became popular. That’s work. And, for pleasure, I’ve been reading sports stories and blogs from home and work for a long time. That works just fine for me.
Over the years I’ve used most of the readers on the market. And - for a long time - I’ve occasionally downloaded free books here.
But electronic books just haven’t worked for me - as far as providing the same sort of relaxation and pleasure that I get from a book printed on paper. Part of it is that printed books are a habit and habits are hard to break. But I think the biggest hurdle for me is that the process of using a reader isn’t as easy or seamless as turning a page.
By PatrckB
November 2, 2006 08:18 AM | Link to this
For a source of free books, check out Project Gutenberg. They have over 19,000 books online whos copyright has expired. You can also download and burn a CD or DVD of 600(CD) or 9,400(DVD) their most popular ebooks. I learned how to use bittorrent just to be able to get the DVD.
By Judy OBrien
November 3, 2006 01:25 PM | Link to this
I usually cut your column for keeping but on the 22nd of October I slipped. It seems to be you has a column about static electricity and you talked about using a radio to check this out. If you could email me a link to check out this column I sure would appreciate it.
I am a 7 day a week subscriber to the AJC.
Thanks so much, Judy
By Prootwadl
November 3, 2006 03:35 PM | Link to this
Folks intersted in searching through books that are both in and out of copyright might find the new Google Book Search beta site to be worthwhile.
The end results of a search are a mix of full books containing the search text and books that are still for sale which you can buy, and the interface is an interesting web-based PDF viewer which looks a little like a book itself.
As a source of older books from the 19th century, this has a lot of potential, but it’s also an interesting way to find books that might apply to a particular subject or even mention a specific person or town.