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Post by Psychichobo on Sept 26, 2012 21:02:08 GMT
K peeps, I've got a question for you all, being somewhat of a literary persuasion...
What is your take on the books vs. ereaders debate?
Are you for or against any particular side? Do you think they can coexist in some form? Or do you merely not give a damn about anything that isn't on a TV screen?
I was considering a poll for this, but we all know how often people fall into the 'other' category, so I would prefer some opinions.
I personally am more of a book fan, though I can see the appeal of ereaders. I have yet to try one, which may heavily colour my perception, as the only things that're keeping me away are the worries about whether particular titles are available, and the relentless update fetish occurring there that makes up most of Apple's revenue in the smartphone world.
So what do you carapace laden Hivers think? Come, tell all!
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Post by Illithid on Sept 26, 2012 21:29:57 GMT
I am more of a book fan, but I do like my iPad for gaming (can upload all my codexes and just read away and check opponents stats!)
I find reading for long periods of time off a screen hurts my eyes (even with with that light that makes it look less shiny).
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Post by robomummy on Sept 26, 2012 21:45:20 GMT
Books, you cant accidentally delete one and carrying alot of them around will make you stronger.
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Post by Overread on Sept 26, 2012 21:50:20 GMT
I've got an Amazon Kindle and I love it!
Now I'm all for books, I really love getting a book, holding it, feeling it - that new book smell and all. Plus I like them on the shelf. Heck I often wish that Fantasy would get some really good publications, hardbacks with coloured plates and all like you can get for Lord of the Rings and not just your trade paperback and your oversized hardback editions.
That said books are heavy, esp if you go picking up big epic sagas or hardbacks. Try carrying anything more than one or two and you've got quite a bulk and weight. Plus mail order or travelling into get books from the shop is never fast enough when you just finished the last page and need the next released book in a series.
With the kindle I get:
1) e-ink - this is nothing like LCD screens and is almost akin to paper - it doesn't even have pixels and the like. What you get is a screen which looks and acts almost exactly like a page in a book (I spent a good 10 mins trying to peel the intro cover off my kindle when I first got it - till I realised that it wasn't a stickon cover, and was the actual print on the screen itself). The only time it ever gives problems is with a very strong light source and reflection of the light source on the screen - but otherwise its as easy to read (and when the lights go out as difficult to read) as paper.
2) Ability to carry 1000s of books for less space than an average paperback - this is fantastic. I can take two or three books for travel or train trips and read whichever one I like without having to actually carry the books.
3) It's lighter than a thick hardback or paperback; this really makes a difference when holding it. You can read without getting the same amount of strain on your fingers- yes it has some weight, but its thinner and easier to hold than many (though I do use a flip-over cover for it so its got some smoother, easier to hold leather around it).
4) I can buy - download and start reading a new book in moments, less time than it takes to boil the kettle. Great for new publications.
5) I can get free (legally) books from online archives of copyright expired novels as well as any independently written works with free distribution and I can read them on the kindle without having to read from the computer. Heck with these alone if you raid some of the archives you can get a few £100 worth of legally free books on your e-reader. It almost pays for itself in the cost you save from having to buy them in paperback.
It has got limitations though; first up the e-ink doesn't do colour so you're trapped with black and white, great for books but means cover art and some periodical publications don't show their best on it.
Secondly its not that good with images, it shows them, but can get a bit confused with text placement around them and you can end up having to always zoom in and out to read or see anything on them.
Thirdly whilst page turning is effortless, you can't "flip" through a book on a kindle like you can with a real book. For reference or anything like that its a bit more of a chore to use not just because you've lost the tactile feel of things, but also because e-ink isn't designed to run that fast and update the page with a super fast refresh rate.
In short for pure reading of novel books the Kindle and e-readers are ideal and every reader I know who has bought one ends up loving them. They don't stop getting books; but they do get a way to buy and read which is a bit more comfortable. Many older generation readers I know even like the e-readers because they can take their glasses off, set the print size to larger and read with ease - so they are certainly not a bit of tech that I feel is linked to generation gap.
In the end the Kindle is quite basic, its really just an electronic book - its got a few extras around the edges, but at its core its a book. You can get audio books on them and use text to speech (the latter is horrible as almost all text to speech is, but it works). You've also got access through the unit to the Amazon book store; and you can even use the trail online and mp3 player features; though they are experimental and not that good (the MP3 for example has only got play - stop and volume control - you can't even choose the tracks or scroll through them - very basic and experimental).
I think if you read a lot then an e-reader is worth considering.
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Post by Overread on Sept 26, 2012 21:52:11 GMT
Books, you cant accidentally delete one Amazon bought books remain linked to your Amazon Account not the unit; so you can download it again in seconds if you delete it off the Kindle by accident (this also means you can use your collection on more than one unit/machine at a time - I think its hard limited to something like being stored locally on 3 separate spots from phones to computers to kindles). You can also have it back up your own stored content to your Amazon account. |
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Post by commandersasha on Sept 26, 2012 22:35:25 GMT
I am old. I look books. Furthermore, I like tatty, 2nd hand books from charity shops.
Finding a comment a previous owner has written, or a phone number, or a train ticket, is like sharing a furtive glance with a stranger.
A few years ago I was working my way through John Wyndham's books (SF writer from the 1950s). My copy of "The Kraken Wakes", an apocalyptic novel that sees our world devastated, was an early edition Penguin copy, the old style orange covers and Gill Sans font, and was in several pieces, the spine having collapsed.
As I read of the pages from books in the British Library being washed down the flooded Euston Road, the tatty copy in my hand was not just a delivery system for the prose, it was an actor in a play. No eBook could bring you that.
I fold down the corners of pages with passages I like, for future browsing.
I write in the margins.
I spank my wife with them.
The iBook app on my phone has gaming PDFs and technical manuals for work on it, but for pleasure reading? No thanks! I have a dog-eared Hunter S Thompson in my jacket pocket, that is waiting for me to dive into, impatiently.
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Post by Bot on Sept 26, 2012 23:23:23 GMT
Books, you cant accidentally delete one and carrying alot of them around will make you stronger. This I really love getting a book, holding it, feeling it - that new book smell and all. Plus I like them on the shelf. And this is why I prefer books. Also... When reading stories and stuff like that, I have an easier time reading in a book than on a screen... Yup. |
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Post by Geneva on Sept 26, 2012 23:47:01 GMT
Books. Hands down.
I can certainly see the appeal of e-readers and my position is based entirely on personal taste rather than objective reasoning but I love a good, solid book that I can carry around, put on a shelf or whack intruding spiders with. There's the simple organic charm of that new book smell or the weighty feel of a hardback as you prepare to delve into a Tolstoy-length novel and even the satisfying feeling of pride as you realise you have enough of the damn things to build a small house out of. In fact, when I first moved out of home I used stacked books as ersatz furniture until I could afford to buy some of my own. Also, I've never had a book run out of battery because I forgot to charge it up that morning.
The biggest boon though - and this is a biggie - is that accidentally dropping a book doesn't cost you almost 200 bucks and your entire literary collection along with it. Just from looking at the state of the books on my bookshelf from here I can safely tell you that I tend to drop books pretty often. (Let's face it, there's a certain satisfaction to reading yourself to sleep and then lazily dropping the book at the bedside while nodding off.)
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Post by Psychichobo on Sept 26, 2012 23:50:52 GMT
For the record, I will note that is IS very difficult to accidentally delete a book since it's on your account, and just as easy to lose a book physically. Also, from my (limited) experience the screen is designed to be easy to read.
Still, I do worry about losing the actual ereader though. Any experiences there? Might be overreacting, given that I've never lost a handheld gaming console...
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Post by Overread on Sept 27, 2012 0:37:51 GMT
Unless you are very clumsy or prone to daft acts if you can look after a paperback you can look after a kindle. Heck I rather like the fact that I can eat a packet of crisps and not have to worry about finger stains all over the pages on the Kindle. Honestly I think for people who enjoy reading and read actively that having one is worth it. For the average person who reads one book a year - yep no point what so ever - but for readers I've yet to read of someone getting one - using it and hating it (and many were very skeptical of them).
Note this is e-readers - not ipads or kindlefires or all those other tablet things. Those are still very much gimicky as far as I can work out. Some nice apps, and a few more if you use the game aid kind; but really its only supplementing other products at present. It lacks the power and versatility of a mini-laptop and yet also lacks being individual on its own with its own features - much of that because they are all strongly capped with what they can/can't do by design so that there is "upgrade" around the corner.
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Post by t⊗theark on Sept 27, 2012 0:52:34 GMT
I guess I'm against the trend - I have a kindle from my last birthday:-
-I can read in the dark;
-I can have a huge ammount of books without taking any room;
-silver fish can't eat a them;
-there's more free content (even excluding the pirated stuff);
-don't need to wait for delivery/go to thea book store;
-I can look at a screen for longer and far less strain than I can upon paper
Although I much prefer reading PDFs off my laptop. They're easier to back up and it has a solid-state drive - it's been handled quite haphazardly. How I recall nights of study ending with my nights falling asleep before a pdf of a Paul Di Filippo piece to the music of Skream, Ray Bryant, Cradle of Filth, or Bach by a half drunk cup of cooling chai. Such a thing exceeds sex.
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Post by Geneva on Sept 27, 2012 0:53:59 GMT
Note this is e-readers - not ipads or kindlefires or all those other tablet things. I just realised I misunderstood this entire thread. That's awkward. |
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Post by yoritomo on Sept 27, 2012 2:16:19 GMT
I would disagree. I feel that a tablet should fall into the e-reader category if you have an e-reader app on it. Why does a kindle count as an e-reader but my i-Pad with kindle app that uses my Amazon account doesn't count? Heck, I can flip through pages on my i-Pad thanks to the touch screen
Anyways, I'm a book guy myself. I'm probably in the last generation to like books over e-readers. People my age grew up with books. And while we understand and respect e-readers, it just isn't the same as the books we learned to read with.
It isn't even a decision for me anyways, all the books I want to read are old enough to not be available on e-readers or too specialized. The day I can find books about interbellum tanks on an e-reader is the day I can truly make an informed decision on the subject.
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Post by Tyamius, Shadow Lord on Sept 27, 2012 2:23:10 GMT
I like both. Some books you can't get on the kindle or are just ones you want to hold onto forever. Like my entire R.A.Salvatore Drizzt Collection, which is high valued. I own every single book in mint plus the collection (omnibus version). I like the ereader when I travel, or just don't have the room to carry around a bunch of books.
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Post by Overread on Sept 27, 2012 13:50:26 GMT
yoritomo - I tend to raw a line between "e-readers" and Ipads and the like because of the difference in the displays. You are very correct that if you've got the reader app you can certainly read on an iPad and such; however it won't give you the e-ink display. That's kind of why I divide the two as the reading experiences are very different.
As for older books there are lots of copyright free books being made into text documents and ebooks by volunteers and being added to online archives. For example I've got the full works (or at least most of them) by H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard without paying a single penny. All legally and without any harm to the authors (the copyrights have expired and both authors are long gone from the world). Though I think if you're reading books about tanks you'll likely have schematics and drawings in them so yeah books will win over.
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