books: e- version or the real deal?

[GL]

a short while ago i re-read dicken's a christmas carol as i always do this time of the year. however this year i did it digitally as i read it off my iphone's kindle app. i guess times just keep on changing.

so now i'm curious.. how have you been reading books lately? are you reading books the good old fashioned way or have you gone e-book? or is it both?

 

[Beenjee]

Both.
I got myself Kindle, it's comfortable and it's fun but I still like to buy a real book just to feel it in my hands.
Plus I love to browse the shelves in the book store. So the books that I want to keep I buy the old fashioned way.

 

[belamyi]

I prefer the written content, thank you.
At any rate, electronic devices are always even more fragile than paper: e-books are perfect for storing, paper books for keeping... apart from the fact that only relatively few really good books are available on e-support, and that there is too much commercial anglo shit available.
But you already know that written documents and fine male ass are two of my top favorite things in the world.

 

[AussieGuy91]

Being the techie sort of guy that I am, I mostly prefer a digital version (I should really invest in a Kindle or iPad).

 

[Spiff]

I prefer the written content, thank you.

I think you mean "printed" rather than "written". eBooks like regular books have words you read which means it is written.

 

[belamyi]

I think you mean "printed" rather than "written". eBooks like regular books have words you read which means it is written.

That's why I did mean "written": my point is that the important thing is the content, not how it is delivered.

In this case my broken English was asleep, but I guess you can never tell for sure when I am expressing in perfect English an unexpected view, and when I am using unexpected English to convey conventional views... whenever I am conventional at all

 

[belamyi]

a short while ago i re-read dicken's a christmas carol as i always do this time of the year.

Man, is that triple-quaint: reading a particular book in a particular time of the year, ever reading A Christmas Carol (or Dickens for that matter, make it quadruple if you want) and reading A Christmas Carol in Advent... as a rule (quintuple?).

 

[G-Lexington]

I love going to bookstores and libraries, wandering around, having a bunch of unrelated things catch my eye, and buying them/checking them out. I've tried doing the same thing with eBooks, and...dunno. Not the same.

Lex

 

[strangepoetry]

I voted both. But only because I have a large collection of each. I definitely prefer an old fashioned, snuggle-up-on-the-sofa, three-hour-library-excavation-find ancient hardbound BOOK.

I could live in a Barnes & Noble and be perfectly and eternally content.

 

[Hello-Good-Bi]

I was hesitant to download the Kindle app for my iPhone because I didn't think I would like it but boy was I wrong! I use it every day and love not having to remember to grab a book on the way out the door! I'm an e-book believer now. Bonus points for not having to pay 30 bucks for a new hardcover release and not having to store it!

 

[belamyi]

I voted both. But only because I have a large collection of each. I definitely prefer an old fashioned, snuggle-up-on-the-sofa, three-hour-library-excavation-find ancient hardbound BOOK.

I could live in a Barnes & Noble and be perfectly and eternally content.

Provided I'm waited on bath and food, I'd rather choose a national or university library, in France, the US, Britain or China.

 

[strangepoetry]

Provided I'm waited on bath and food, I'd rather choose a national or university library, in France, the US, Britain or China.

Well, my Barnes & Noble has both bathrooms AND food, so perhaps you'll reconsider...

I'm with you on the Library idea, however I can think of no worse nightmare than having to spend eternity in my favorite of all places--a library-- only to discover that all the glorious texts are IN CHINESE!! It'd be pure hell--having all the books I could ever want, but NO ABILITY TO READ THEM.

 

[belamyi]

Wasn't it a Twilight Zone episode where Burgess Meredith(?) was fated to spend eternity in a vast library ... breaking his reading glasses at the very end of the story?

Damn I missed that episode?

As for the Chinese thing, strangepoetry, you would learn Chinese with a reverse use of the Chinese methods to learn English and so you would be able to appreciate the finest LYRIC poetry (apart from Sappho's) ever written...
I had also considered a Russian library, but Russia is so so much even creepier than China can ever get...

 

[FanofFiction]

Real books are more convenient I find for research. You can have a bunch of books out on your desk at once and go from one quote or fact to another a lot faster... unless you're wealthy enough to have six or seven kindles for research... I also enjoy having my library on display when people come over. Makes me look far more intelligent than I actually am. Kindles only make you look trendy, not smart.

 

[wooffy]

I went ebook a few months back (Kobo). While the technology is still immature, and publishers have some very anti-consumer policies, overall I plan to avoid buying paper-books from now on.

Other than the obvious environmental and convenience issues, ebooks are just better for me overall. First (provided you're not an idiot who has never hard of back-ups) you will only need to buy a title once. I've had to replace worn-out or damaged paper books before. Secondly is the space issue - next time I move, do I want to pack a dozen boxes of books, or one reader?

For non-fiction give me PDF's on a computer! Fully searchable, I can have as many open as I want without needing a huge table, can copy-and-paste into Evernote with a few clicks, etc. Seems silly to do research in paper books anymore.

Bound volumes will always exist as valued items, but the days of paper as the main delivery of the written word are fortunately numbered.

 

[belamyi]

I went ebook a few months back (Kobo). While the technology is still immature, and publishers have some very anti-consumer policies, overall I plan to avoid buying paper-books from now on.

Other than the obvious environmental and convenience issues, ebooks are just better for me overall. First (provided you're not an idiot who has never hard of back-ups) you will only need to buy a title once. I've had to replace worn-out or damaged paper books before. Secondly is the space issue - next time I move, do I want to pack a dozen boxes of books, or one reader?

For non-fiction give me PDF's on a computer! Fully searchable, I can have as many open as I want without needing a huge table, can copy-and-paste into Evernote with a few clicks, etc. Seems silly to do research in paper books anymore.

Bound volumes will always exist as valued items, but the days of paper as the main delivery of the written word are fortunately numbered.

You are taking soooooo many things for granted when talking about the future... but the advantages of ebooks are evident and most welcome. I have always been as picky with the books I buy as I have been with men... well may be not... hm... ok, whatever... I buy only the books that I want to preserve materially, which are part of my very restricted canon of choice, and very rarely, only very rarely, some that I can't get otherwise, although in fact I've always preferred to photocopy... the info of paper books is immediate, you don't need to rely on batteries and all the electronic shit, so a F451 book is always safer as far as preservation is concerned, but for working and storing info, as I said, and there I totally agree, we needed this new technology.

 

[JetSetJake]

Generally I prefer real books, although I recently bought an Android phone and have started reading a book using the Amazon Kindle app and I think it's cool.

However, I would only read something using the app for a short period of time - for example while commuting. If I want to relax in the evening or on a beach etc, then I will always choose a good old-fashioned book

 

[belamyi]

"Real books", "the real deal"... doesn't anybody else cringe at how stupidly naive it sounds? like saying that "real marriage" is between a man and a woman? In both cases people have got so used to considering the surface and the appearance that they forgot what "the real deal" was actually about...

 

[Swellegant]

I recently published my own novel to Kindle, at the request of my sister, who is an avid Kindle reader; then I published it to Smashwords at the request of my nephew; and since doing so, I have discovered the ease and fun of the ebook, and have been reading a great deal online and with Kindle for PC.

However, I will never abandon paper books... after looking at a computer all day at work, and then most of the evening at home, I need to look at something that is not lit from behind.

 

[belamyi]

This "real deal" business is reminding me of the one at Goodreads: "Is listening to audiobooks 'cheating'?"

Not at all. Cheating would be decoding the lines in books but not remembering anything afterwards or, worse, not being able to make any sense of it and still pass for a literate person who can read, only because that person is able to "decode".

If you believe that what you read are sounds, audiobooks may actually be more "the real thing", just like a performance of a musical composition is more "the real thing" than just the score. In fact, reading in silence is closer to "cheating", particularly in works which follow more complex and sophisticated elocutionary patterns of rhythm and melody: you can not actually "get" at least half of Shakespeare or Byron (I mean particularly Don Juan) if you ignore that and reduce their works to the plot and some brilliant lines of the characters.

A few centuries ago you could be a literate aristocrat who knew literary works by heart and could compose and speak very finely, even though he could not recognize the letters and would require someone else to put his words black-on-white, while today you can be called literate and be able to read letters and have no fucking idea what they mean, and be even less capable of writing down anything coherent in your own mother language. Pavarotti couldn't read music and you could hardly call him a musical illiterate, couldn't you?