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Reading on paper or screen

katiesparkles

One of the Regulars
Messages
187
Location
Rhode Island
I was briefly considering getting an e-reader because I commute daily and carrying around large books, even if they're paperbacks, can get quite tiring, but I decided against it. I don't like those e-readers; I want to see the progress I made when reading, and feel the paper, and count pages.. not stare at yet another screen.
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,728
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
Anyone who subscribes to Smithsonian magazine, take a look at the back cover of the issue that's just out: an ad promoting print as an art form, put out by a paper manufacturer. I think this must be the first time in six hundred years that print has had to try to justify itself as something other than the primary conduit for the transmission of human knowledge.
 

J.W.

A-List Customer
Messages
312
Location
Southern tip of northern Germany
I think for newspapers, the electronic version is the future. Just imagine how much paper we could save! For traveling, I wold like a tablet device, too. No need to pack 5 different guidebooks: just take the tablet, have the guidebooks in e-format. Look at the pictures you have taken over the day in the evening in a good size and put them online straight away. Oh, and you can take your favourite books (yeah, or things you need to read for work) on vacation, too. One device --> 100 books or so.
But for pleasure, give me a nice book anytime.
 

Edward

Bartender
Messages
25,078
Location
London, UK
I think for newspapers, the electronic version is the future. Just imagine how much paper we could save! For traveling, I wold like a tablet device, too. No need to pack 5 different guidebooks: just take the tablet, have the guidebooks in e-format. Look at the pictures you have taken over the day in the evening in a good size and put them online straight away. Oh, and you can take your favourite books (yeah, or things you need to read for work) on vacation, too. One device --> 100 books or so.
But for pleasure, give me a nice book anytime.

Exactly. I don't expect books to go anywhere any time soon, but there are circumstances in which digital is simply more convenient, and I'm very ready to embrace that. I'm currently spending a few days teaching at our partner campus in Beijing, and I brought my Kindle with me as it weighs less than one of the paperbacks I was considering. I'm not one to pay out big money for ebooks, but the content I've downloaded for free so far is fantastic. Currently revisiting an old friend in Dracula. Wonderfully convenient over dinner in the hotel, too (due to widely varying schedules in a teaching day that can run between 8am and 8pm, I frequently eat alone out here as opposed to with colleagues). After all day looking at a screen, the e-ink of my kindle is very easy on the eyes. I'd like a Kindle Fire maybe as a tablet in future, but the one-trick pony of the e-ink Kindle is the bee's knees. The killer app for those will be e-ink, no-backlit, in colour - I should think we'll see rapid adoption at that point. I'm interested to see at what point my undergraduates start using them for text books. So far they all stick with paper (partly an availability issue), but given that it is now the norm for them to come to class and take all their notes on laptops, it will only be a matter of time before they embrace that technology too.

Here's a really good example of why I won't switch to electronic media...

Amazon Tracks Kindle Users' Highlighted E-Book Passages

Interesting. I only use my for pleasure reading, so have never highlighted. (Actually, I'm sure I'm off-grid as I've never yet hooked my Kindle itself up directly to Amazon....). I must start highlighting random bits to play with them. I'll maybe be careful when it comes to the copies of the Bible and the Quran I have on there ;) , but I could have fun otherwise..... must get Moby Dick and highlight every individual use of the word "eskimo".... ;)
 

MisterCairo

I'll Lock Up
Messages
7,005
Location
Gads Hill, Ontario
Paper. Period. I get enough screen time at work. For leisure and pleasure, it's paper and ink (sorry Edward, you're not looking at ink, e or otherwise, on a kindle. It's lighted pixels or whatever!).
 

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