Ever since I saw a Sony book reader in an exchange a few years ago-I’ve toyed with the idea of getting a Kindle. They remind me of what Arthur C. Clarke called a”Newspad”, which in his novel 2001-A Space Odyssey had replaced books and newspapers. Amazon’s ad makes it sound just like the device he described over 40 years ago.
I mean, think of the boxes I would have saved in my last move, where I had to move my library of books. (25 Full shelves and that does not count the four boxes of old books in the garage). It seems fascinating-until you realize that maybe, just maybe, books don’t need replacing.
Basically publishers have no incentive to encourage people to read books on screens and every incentive to get them to enjoy the fetish of the object. The preference consumers have shown for digitized music and iPods doesn’t seem to translate to books. The usefulness of the iPod derives from its ability to shuffle songs that many people enjoy as background, more or less passively. On the subway I hear about a dozen songs each morning, and it pleases me that they are randomly selected from a list of several thousand. But I wouldn’t want my reading material served up that way. Generally I’m reading one thing at a time, and I benefit from the finality of that decision, when I leave home with one book. Books have the great built-in advantage of preventing me from surfing away elsewhere when the reading becomes arduous or requires an effort of concentration.
What he said. For now, I think I’ll save the $359 dollars for a rainy day. Or a plane ticket to (FILL IN THE BLANK).
I think it would be useful if you spent a lot of time on the road. You could have your blogs, magazines and books all in one large paperback sized box.
The screen is surprisingly readable for a non-backlit B&W screen.
But, I prefer holding a regular book when I’m reading, so I’m not in a rush either. (I’m not currently a road warrior)
I was given the latest Sony e-book for my birthday last month. It has a few hundred books on it now and I enjoy it. I really could have used this during all my deployments in the 80’s and 90’s when I suffered a severe reading drought. I can read the average paperback book in a few hours and there isn’t enough room in a duffle for a reasonable number of books. OTOH, I have thousands of books on my laptop and that goes where I go so I have an extensive library wherever I go so it could be that the e-book is redundant except that it fits in my pocket.
I don’t know. I took the money I saved from not buying it and bought a very nice .22 cal pistol with which to massacre paper targets. A considerable savings over the .45 cal cost to kill paper now that I’m no longer subsidized in my 9mm paper slaying frenzies.
I have a book budget of $300 a month, so it’s obvious I love to read. I had the Rocket Ebook and loved it, then B&N stopped supporting it. My wife gave me a Kindle for Christmas and I love it even more. I travel quite a bit and am able to carry over 200 books in my Kindle. Most titles are available and when one isn’t I click a link requesting it and most of the time the time the publisher allows Amazon to convert it.
Get one. .
Audiobooks fill the niche for this quite nicely. You can get through a number of books that otherwise you might not have time for during trips or even commuting to/from work.
The Washington Beltway parking lot and other similar locations are ideal for this genre.
I can listen to an audio book in a car but anywhere else I’ll fall asleep.