Personally, I like my books to be physical. I like to hold them in my hands, feel the pages, note the worn spots where my thumbs usually rest. When I get a new book, I run my hands over the cover, rub the embossed text, tilt it back and forth to look at the spot-lamination. I smell it, judging whether or not I like the type of ink used. When it’s a book that I’ve been looking forward to, I often emit a little happy noise (often termed a “fangirl squeal”) and I’ll give the book a hug. It’s not just about the story. I admit it: I’m a complete book geek.
But I don’t think that e-books are bad, or that they’ll one day be the death of my cherished, wasteful, blocks of paper that have been bound together with glue or string.
E-books are, in my opinion, an amazing invention. After all, with the Kindle 2, you can hold up to 1,500 books in your hands. While I probably have around that many books, I certainly can’t hold them all at once. Traveling with an e-book reader would also be more convenient. At the speed I read, I don’t just finish everything I take with me on a 2-week trip, I also tend to buy another half-dozen books while I’m gone and then I have difficulty bringing them back home with me. Being able to take a plentiful supply of books without paying huge fees for extra baggage at the airport is definitely tempting.
I don’t think I’d use the Kindle 2’s function for it to read a book aloud, though. However, it seems that it would be very useful for the visually impaired or someone who was incapable of holding a book if they were hospitalized, for example. The Kindle 2 could even be seen as a replacement for an audio book format, but only if the voice was pleasant to listen to.
I may buy a Kindle some day (or the Sony e-reader) when they come to Canada. But I’d still like to move to a bigger place where I can put in more bookshelves.
March 22, 2009 at 9:17 PM
[...] e-book reader,because in the long term it may be less wasteful and harmful to the environment, but this post shows, I love the physical book [...]