E-Readers (Kindle, Nook, using iPad for reading) yay or nay

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xp to self whoa wait does it? I don't think it used to. I guess it does.

silby, Friday, 16 December 2011 04:52 (twelve years ago) link

I own an e-reader and split my reading between that and regular books was my vote. Haven't bought a single e-book, I use gutenberg and yes I get pirated copies of non out-of-copyright stuff - but since I got my e-reader I've borrowed and bought more real books than ever before.

ledge, Friday, 16 December 2011 09:42 (twelve years ago) link

I don't especially dislike it, it's more like I just never felt like a book was something that needed improving. With the iPod I quickly saw the advantages of having a ton of different music in one tiny place, not having to change CD's, etc.

^^^^

flexidisc, Friday, 16 December 2011 12:21 (twelve years ago) link

With the e-reader I quickly saw the advantages of having a ton of different books in one place, e.g. when I am on holiday and don't want to fill my luggage with bulky weighty tomes.

ledge, Friday, 16 December 2011 12:27 (twelve years ago) link

or just y'know maybe not wanting to read the one book at a time

bloating forecast: ruff swells (p much resigned to deems), Friday, 16 December 2011 12:35 (twelve years ago) link

there was an ilxory party last week where virginia plain (librarian) and I were having a discussion w/ this twirpy author who kept claiming (w/ a shit eating grin) that he felt like libraries violated his property rights.

You should tell us his name so we can all illegally download his books.

Nicole, Friday, 16 December 2011 13:42 (twelve years ago) link

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

System, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 00:01 (twelve years ago) link

re-reading Lem's "Return from the Stars" (1961) this morning, lol'd at this passage:

"No longer was it possible to pbrowse among shelves, to weigh volumes in the hand, to feel their heft, the promise of ponderous reading. The books were crystals with recorded contents. They could be read with the aid of an opton, which was similar to a book but had only one page between the covers. At a touch, successive pages of the text appeared on it. But optons were little used, the sales-robot told me. The public preferred lectons - lectons read out loud, they could be set to any voice, tempo, and modulation... The robot that served me was itself an encyclopedia, in that - as it told me - it was linkeed directly, through electronic catalogues, to templates of every book on Earth."

aesthetic partisan (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 00:08 (twelve years ago) link

this makes me realize you've never been to a paper mill.

my point was that books are largely non-toxic and easily recycled at the end of their useful life, which is typically decades after being printed. this is not the case with e-readers, which will be obsolete in a few years, and cannot be easily recycled.

aesthetic partisan (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 00:12 (twelve years ago) link

also dunno if yr aware of this but paper grows on trees and you can always grow more trees. after all the rare earth metals are mined, it's not like the earth's gonna make a lot more in a few years.

aesthetic partisan (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 00:13 (twelve years ago) link

there's also the kid in 'stars in my pockets like grains of sand' who has an Absorb The Entire Western Canon brain plug or w/e

thompp, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 00:15 (twelve years ago) link

w.h. smith had demo units of their version of this idea out and i had a go on one and it took somewhere over a second to load the next 'page' of text -- are other units this bad? is it just me who finds this terrible and unworkable with?

if there was one that connected straight up to jstor etc i'd die for it. to read, like, novels, seems kind of pointless.

also the death of typography and the reading environment etc etc

thompp, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 00:17 (twelve years ago) link

like: I have no interest in an e-reader; I like the feel and smell of musty yellowed paper and the faint narcissistic thrill

understates the case of this stuff somewhat. thinking of the text of a book as some platonic ideal away from all decisions as to where it physically lies on the page = colossal dud

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-O1_Ky06bV30/TodrT6hyl2I/AAAAAAAAAqU/-8VkV8t8gZc/s400/Hepburn12_152.jpg

http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewFile/1405/1323/14245

thompp, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 00:22 (twelve years ago) link

I have idly wondered how material that plays with typefaces and typesetting (like, say Alfred Bester, or Aldiss' Barefoot in the Head) is handled by e-readers

aesthetic partisan (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 00:27 (twelve years ago) link

gotta say, when i think of that kind of thing those are the two first names to pop into my head too

thompp, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 00:38 (twelve years ago) link

ha i just got a nook and its p cool but this thread makes me want to take a hammer to it

upper mississippi 2: still shakin, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 00:45 (twelve years ago) link

the other thing I idly wonder about is how e-readers handle books that aren't intended to be read in sequence - Cortazar's Hopscotch for ex.

aesthetic partisan (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 00:48 (twelve years ago) link

Hyperlinks?

wang dang google doodle (James Redd), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 01:57 (twelve years ago) link

my point was that books are largely non-toxic and easily recycled at the end of their useful life, which is typically decades after being printed. this is not the case with e-readers, which will be obsolete in a few years, and cannot be easily recycled.

Huh? Paper mill effluent is very toxic (count the number of paper product-related Superfund sites), the ink used in printing is toxic (I write production software for a big commercial printer and we have to track, monitor, and report every bit of ink to the air quality board), then there's the all the oil used to transport everything from mill, printer, distributor, book store, doorstep, and recycler.

e-reader production is just as toxic, but you have to factor in total production cost to deliver that book to your house.

Elvis Telecom, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 03:47 (twelve years ago) link

yeahh shakey's environmental accounting is v. 1-dimensional

iatee, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 03:48 (twelve years ago) link

Whenever possible, I'll purchase the electronic version of a book over the printed version - I move around way too much and moving the books that I have now is a logistical hassle.

Still, it's going to be a long time before an e-reader will be up to replacing a big coffee-table art monograph, museum catalog, etc.

Elvis Telecom, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 03:54 (twelve years ago) link

the other thing I idly wonder about is how e-readers handle books that aren't intended to be read in sequence - Cortazar's Hopscotch for ex.

James Burke's The Pinball Effect comes to mind too. Reading it feels like the footnotes are the text and the text are the footnotes.

Elvis Telecom, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 03:55 (twelve years ago) link

man i was in b&n today and the cheapest nook is hella small and light, looks p dope

Cooper Chucklebutt, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 04:03 (twelve years ago) link

voted this I own an iPad or other tablet but mainly do my reading in old-fashionied books but the truth is i just dont read that many books anymore cause im too busy reading the internet rip

Cooper Chucklebutt, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 04:04 (twelve years ago) link

my parents are very into their kindles and ipads

i'm not really feeling it

mookieproof, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 04:07 (twelve years ago) link

ipad is great for traveling, not really sure it was worth the purchase price for how much i use it tho, i subscribed to the new yorker and ive barely read it, when i got the print magazine i demolished every issue so idk

Cooper Chucklebutt, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 04:09 (twelve years ago) link

I'm pretty much an agnostic when it comes to reading formats (I'm still baffled by folks who leave email, twitter, chat, etc. up when they're reading - turn all that distracting shit off!) but at least electronic editions don't necessarily have a single point of failure (fire, flood, etc.)

Also

http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/images/Twilight-Zone-Time-Enough-At-Last-e1308174702152.png

Elvis Telecom, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 04:28 (twelve years ago) link

In that Twilight Zone pic, most of the visible books appear to be old law books.

Aimless, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 04:34 (twelve years ago) link

when the meteorite hits and the power grid is destroyed along with modern society, then you'll wish you'd eschewed these gadgets and kept a copy of 'the way things work' in a ziplock bag

mookieproof, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 04:49 (twelve years ago) link

The only thing that's srsly making me consider an e-reader is the previous 3 months I've been spending trying to read Infinite Jest on public transit. That shit is heavy to carry round and I can't comfortably hold & read it with one hand while standing on a packed bus. But I get most books from the library for free so I'd have to be doing a lot of commuting to justify the cost.

kinder, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 07:43 (twelve years ago) link

amazon kinder

monomaniatee (t. silaviver), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 07:49 (twelve years ago) link

In that Twilight Zone pic, most of the visible books appear to be old law books.

― Aimless, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 04:34 (4 hours ago) Permalink

what this teaches us is that howsoever the production and distribution mechanisms of the written word may change the logistics of set dressing will remain pretty much the same throughout

thompp, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 08:48 (twelve years ago) link

Ha

wang dang google doodle (James Redd), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 11:23 (twelve years ago) link

I use an iPad or other tablet for some of my reading

It's probably about half and half e-books on the iPad and paper books from the library. I love e-books for all the reasons stated above by others, although I really like paper books, too. I just like reading, so whatever allows me to read more makes me happy.

The iPad kind of blows as an e-reader on public transit so I have thought about getting a dedicated e-reader. I don't know, though. It feels kind of overly extravagant.

wore glasses and said things (thejenny), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 13:36 (twelve years ago) link

If I read on public transit I just use my phone. It's only 25 minutes, so not bad at all.

Jeff, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 13:39 (twelve years ago) link

It drives me crazy when books aren't eAvailable. I've wanted to read Lore of Running for 2 years now but refuse to until it is available in ebook format.

Jeff, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 13:42 (twelve years ago) link

i don't see the point of ipads either

degas-dirty monet (lex pretend), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 13:43 (twelve years ago) link

is it really that they're just smaller than laptops? i kind of feel like i don't need a halfway house b/w the laptop and the phone

degas-dirty monet (lex pretend), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 13:43 (twelve years ago) link

I use it as a laptop.

wore glasses and said things (thejenny), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 13:52 (twelve years ago) link

Also good for: reading books, watching movies/TV in bed or on planes, playing games, browsing the internet, light (and I mean light - if I have serious writing to do, I do it at the desktop computer) word processing, reading magazines, looking at recipes while you cook.

wore glasses and said things (thejenny), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 13:54 (twelve years ago) link

yeah - i think i'd rather have a keyboard i can type properly on (simply cannot deal with touchscreens) than a slightly lighter machine tbh

degas-dirty monet (lex pretend), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 13:54 (twelve years ago) link

We also use the iPad to control our home theater pc. Although we can do that with phones as well. Basically the iPads are a constant couch companion. I cram mine in the cushions and just pull it out when ever I need to look something up.

Jeff, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 13:59 (twelve years ago) link

You can get keyboard cases for it to give it a physical keyboard, but for better or worse, MS Word is where it's at for me and Pages, which is the wordprocessing app on the iPad, just doesn't cut it. But even when I had a laptop, I preferred to do most of my writing on a desktop machine - it's just easier on my body - so that wasn't a tough transition for me.

I know some people who write extensively using iPads, but I couldn't do it, and I am okay with touchscreens generally.

xp haha yeah they are good for settling arguments about the more famous roles of Star Trek guest stars.

wore glasses and said things (thejenny), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 14:01 (twelve years ago) link

I think ebooks costing more is a good thing, BTW

flexidisc, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 14:51 (twelve years ago) link

Why?

wore glasses and said things (thejenny), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 14:53 (twelve years ago) link

people are gonna be more likely to pirate $15 books than $5 books

iatee, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 14:56 (twelve years ago) link

Well, it undervalues the amount of work going into writing a book, for one.

flexidisc, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 14:57 (twelve years ago) link

i almost always buy used books, which are cheaper than ebooks is one thing

Cooper Chucklebutt, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 14:58 (twelve years ago) link

Me too.

flexidisc, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 14:58 (twelve years ago) link


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