I’m a strict book man myself, and after an initial bump, I haven’t noticed a continued upswing in ebook usage on the subway — perhaps even a downtrend. then maybe christmas and the new Kindles will change that.
How does reading a book provide a faint narcissistic thrill?
yeah i was gonna say
maybe that poll option got truncated?
i have no interest in an e-reader because books are easier, more convenient, less breakable, cheaper and because i absolutely treasure NOT having to look at a screen for once
e-readers are v interesting from publishers’ perspectives but from a consumer perspective i have no idea what the attraction is
it was, the full option was “I like the feel and smell of musty yellowed paper and the faint narcissistic thrill and I’m a douchebag”
i mean i don’t fetishise the physical or anything but...like, when i’m on the move i prefer a paperback to a hardback book, and...similarly i prefer a book to an unwieldy fucking machine
All reading is on the iPad.
books are easier—nope
more convenient—nope
less breakable—ok
cheaper—it depends
because i absolutely treasure NOT having to look at a screen for once—then quit ilx
sorry guys just prepping my new persona as the e-reader hardman
sighhhhh technological evangelists are the worst people
i wouldn’t object to using an e-reader but i’m not about to drop £££££ on one and neither is anyone likely to buy me a present any time soon
books are easier—nope
more convenient—nope
cheaper—it depends
Index or Table of Contents look up are much easier in a physical book.
Don’t see why cheaper is always better, either.
e-readers have their flaws but i was picking at lex because he doesn’t really seem to know that much about them. they aren’t unwieldy (the newest ones are lighter and smaller than most paperbacks), they aren’t particularly expensive, and the attractions to the consumer are pretty clear (being able to carry around a huge library of books, near-instant downloads of new books, including free access to pretty much any public domain text)
also looking at an e-ink screen is not the same as looking at a computer screen
if i find myself on a bus or train or in a room with some time to kill, and maybe i’m not sitting comfortably or whatever, it is obviously easier to pull out a paperback and then shove it back in my bag or pocket if i need to move on quickly, then to pull out and switch on a whole fucking machine that definitely won’t be as easy to shove away afterwards
Books don’t die when you get them wet, either.
why would i want to carry around a library of books? i want to OWN a library of books but i read one at a time
haw i heard the e-reader technology has failed to ensure that file-sharing of books can’t take place. whoops there goes the publishing industry
the kindle on the amazon front page is £89, in what world is that “not particularly expensive”?
also looking at an e-ink screen is not the same as looking at a computer screen
people say this but given how much of my work and leisure time involves looking at a computer screen i do value the time i have not having to look at any kind of electronic device
Pulling out, switching on, and putting away my e-reader no more difficult than a book. I just slip it in a pocket like I would a paperback. Plus I don’t have to leaf through to whatever page I was on, and it’s easier to read one-handed on the tube.
ok lex you shouldn’t get an e-reader
is anybody gonna talk about the resource cost of e-readers vs. books
e-readers are way more convenient than regular books on public transportation, you can hold it and turn pages with just one hand!
That’s basically the best reason for getting one.
ie: an object composed of toxic chemicals that will be obsolete within several years vs. object composed of renewable resource that will last forever
xp
voted I own an e-reader and split my reading between that and regular books
xps
E ink is a world different from any backlit screen. I get overstimulated really easily and have to put away my computer, but E ink isn’t any harder on my eyes than regular paper. When I 1st got my e-reader (nook) I wasn’t sure if I would use it much, but it turns out that I use it constantly. I have a cover which makes mine really easy to read hands-free. I just have to tap it to turn the page.
My brother-in-law bought the new Kindle for my sister for Christmas, but loved it so much that he kept it for himself and ordered another for her. The newest Kindle (E ink) looks fantastic.
the environmental impact question of books vs. e-readers has not been settled; there are a lot of complicated factors involved
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/01/HOCR1M0J6B.DTL
I’ve owned a nook color for a year now. I love it and use it almost every day. I read books, subscribe to magazines, use some of the apps.
But! My wife just bought a Samsung Galaxy. MANY of the apps that I use on my nook—and have paid B&N money for—are apparently available free to her through whatever Samsung’s interface is. Additionally, there are definitely a wider variety of apps available.
I own an e-reader (kindle) and it is awesome but still split my reading between that and regular books
And of course, because it represents one of the most proven models of “reuse” around, the greenest option of all is still your local public library.
^^^pretty conclusive to me
GHG emissions are just part of the picture. cuz the other problem with devices like e-books isn’t the amount of CO2 emitted in their manufacture, it’s the toxic elements involved
personally I read a lot (def more than 22 books per year) but everything I read is either used or from the library. I think the only new books I’ve bought are comic books.
including loads of stuff that (surprise) is not available for e-readers
iPad, some reading but not the majority yet. I’ve bought e-editions of the 2nd Alex Ross book and the ESPN oral history, gotten a bunch of older free stuff in the public domain, and *cough* discovered some science fiction and Faulkner here and there on the web.
if i find myself on a bus or train or in a room with some time to kill, and maybe i’m not sitting comfortably or whatever, it is obviously easier to pull out a paperback and then shove it back in my bag or pocket if i need to move on quickly, then to pull out and switch on a whole fucking machine that definitely won’t be as easy to shove away afterwards
You really have no clue what an e-reader is, do you? Also, no interest in learning; only decrying (cf. Cooking) .
I love my Nook mostly because I don’t have a lot of storage space in my house for print books and it is very portable — I can throw it in my purse and have lots of books available to read.
The reason I favor the Nook over the Kindle is that Amazon has not been crazy about Kindle users using Overdrive so that they can borrow ebooks from libraries or to share books. I’m not trying to sound like a Nook commercial, I’m sure that’s probably true of the iPad or other ereaders that aren’t the Kindle.
No it’s cool, Amazon really are a bunch of assholes.
You really have no clue what an e-reader is, do you? Also, no interest in learning; only decrying (cf. Cooking) .
wtf? fuck you, seriously
i’m sure amazon are assholes but kindles are compatible with overdrive now
i have seen e-readers, both other people using them and ones belonging to friends of mine. they don’t look anywhere near as easy to handle as a book.
as for cooking i tried for ten fucking years.
Yet you still have enormous misconceptions about them that you insist on defending despite hearing evidence that contradicts them.
did you even read my post?
Bickering aside, what do advocates of e-readers have to say about their effect on the availability of books, etc. to those who can’t afford the readers, or otherwise don’t have access to them?
I own an e-reader but I think it’s mostly dud/still mainly read regular books
I own an e-reader and it’s pretty classic but I still mainly read regular books.
Was sort of considering buying my mother one for Christmas but she is not super comfortable with computers (she is fairly competent at various Office tasks but will complain about how illogical they are all the way) and I think she is kind of attached to the idea of paper books
(also e-books are super expensive unless you are adept at finding real ebook links among download scam sites, which is totally not a route I want to have to coach my mother to go down—the Amazon ebook price is rarely more than a couple of pounds cheaper than the paperback price, and I don’t see my mother wanting to pay that for something “virtual” which she’ll be scared she’ll delete by accident, or which Amazon have the right to take away from you again without warning)
case spudette’s mother is the person in this thread i feel i have most in common with (and all her concerns otm!)
i’m with lex on this one
also it’s kind of annoying posting in a thread with actual reasons that haven’t been disproven and being shouted down just b/c i’m not on-message technologically—how do you people cope with the vast majority of people who are even less comfortable using new technology than i am?
Your positions have been rationally countered. You had no rebuttal except to restate your original positions.
how do you people cope with the vast majority of people who are even less comfortable using new technology than i am?
laughing and pointing, mainly
“nope”, “nope”, “nope” ≠ rational countering
c’mon lex they told you you were wrong, what more could you want
kindle for majority
Easy, cheaper, instant access to books
Lighter and more portable than one paperback
Free books
easier to read in bed/bath too
E ink screen does not strain eyes/cause headaches like backlit screen can
Basic models are very simple to use. I recently got my 1st cell phone ever, a very basic one, and it was more complicated than my e-reader.
Lex: n/a, ledge, julia, silverfish and others have presented benefits that counter your detractions. There are on 54 posts itt atm so they should be pretty easy to find... Or Are you trying to rea this thread using a paperback format?
fake sandbox lex
ie: an object composed of toxic chemicals that will be obsolete within several years vs. object composed of renewable resource that will last forever
― aesthetic partisan (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, December 15, 2011 1:16 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Permalink
this kinda analysis is actually very difficult to do cause “someone buys a paperback” involves more emissions than just cutting down some trees, you also have the emissions from a. transit of object b. brick+mortar store c. transit of human being to buy object. then if you really want to drive this to the ground you can say ‘well what else would people be doing with that bookstore location, what happens to the money we’ll save/spend w/ ebooks, etc. also w/ the way the economy works right now, isn’t any new economic activity basically bad for the environment somewhere down the line? a: yeah...’ even ‘just go to the library’ is like, fine, okay that works on an individual level, but libraries w/ physical books depend on a system where lots of people publish and buy physical copies of books.
you also have to consider that people are buying tablet type computers *regardless* of how much they read, so it’s not really and either/or decision w/ paper books. using myself as an example I might buy a tablet *instead* of buying a new laptop and eventually tablet-devices will probably do everything our laptops do so reading a book on them won’t be any ‘worse for the environment’ than reading ilx.
in conclusion there are better things to worry bout.
I read pirated ebooks on my iPad, like I downloaded every Discworld novel recently. l1br4ry.nu is hit-or-miss for textbooky things. I bought a few indie tabletop roleplaying games as PDFs that I read on the iPad.
Basically I might pay $3 but not $10 for an ebook of what would be a backlist mass-market paperback and I don’t really want to buy a physical backlist mass-market paperback. Humongous postmodern novels, physical all the way.
I say, “get that e-reader offa my lawn, you punks!”
iatee otm. Just think of the carbon footprint of this baby
reading a kindle in the city vs. reading a paperback in the suburbs
classic
Ytvgyivihbhi hjkhi
I just read that on my ereader.
The abridged version of Finnegans Wake with shorter thunderwords?
l1br4ry.nu
hmm, is this something that requires an invite?
Is the name in the URL of the image above being familiar just a coincidence?
Jesse, read me an ebook before bed. Plz.
The one with all the pretty pictures.
I am not especially for or against e-readers or paper. What was bugging me was that a couple advocates of paper ITT have been ardent and unrelenting in their derision of e-readers. Of course the poll is pretty inflammatory, but to me it feels like a reaction to the sanctimony coming from some of those in the throes of a backlash against e-readers.
I do not own an e-reader, but I will probably wind up with one sooner or later. I do most of my pleasure/personal interest reading on my iPhone, on my personal laptop, or my work computer. Reading on the iPhone is not great b/c it’s just too small, and it’s not e-ink.
As I see it—the merits e-reading and dead tree reading:
Paper:
- Flipping through and skimming is far easier
- Enjoyment of the tactile aspect, holding a real object, and being able to write on it (this is especially important to me). And autographable.
- Feels familiar and somehow wholesome, authentic, natural, earthy
- Won’t malfunction, for the most part
- No great initial expenditure
- Accessible to more people
- Related to the last three: When the revolution or Armageddon comes, we will be able to use printed matter long after e-readers’ batteries have died. (also, easier to smuggle paper—just try to carry a Kingle or Nook in your own “nook”)
e-reading:
—Index or Table of Contents look up are much easier in a physical book. I find that this view is the other way around for me.
Nearly every single time I’m reading on paper, I wish for Ctrl+F capability. Especially if it’s informational reading.
- Hyperlinks. To definitions, allusions, related information, etc.
- Portability. One light-weight device holds voluminous amounts of text.
- After the cost of purchasing the device, e-text is comparable or cheaper. And, as I understand it, e-books are available on loan from libraries (many? some?).
- Convenience of downloading reading material v. borrowing at the library, buying at a store, ordering online, borrowing from a friend, stealing.
- Kindle is idiot-simple to use. There are people in my life who are profoundly tech illiterate who enjoy their Kindles.
That is a big post.
maybe that poll option got truncated?
― nuhnuhnuh, Thursday, December 15, 2011 5:48 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Permalink
It said something about liking other people to know what you read in the park/on the subway etc. (b/c kindle ain’t got covers right)
Anyway for the most part I just haven’t taken very well to the e-reader experience. 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. With books it’s pretty rare that I’d want more than one on me—in fact the vast possibility of e-readers is a distraction from reading for me (it’s even worse with the iPad).
ie: an object composed of toxic chemicals that will be obsolete within several years vs. object composed of renewable resource that will last forever
― aesthetic partisan (Shakey Mo Collier),
this makes me realize you’ve never been to a paper mill.
Tonight I started some music with the Eno app Bloom, then I browsed through some books trying to decide which one to read next, and then I wrote two emails, and then Jaq started a Words With Friends game against me. Did all that from the same screen. SO difficult.
Lex’s adversarial relationship with tech is such that I’d trust his opinion on e-readers as soon as I trusted his opinion on kitchen gear.
l1br4ry.nu
hmm, is this something that requires an invite?
― William (C), Thursday, December 15, 2011 9:17 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Permalink
lol no it’s just g00gl3proofed
though when you visit it asks you to log in, and has no options to sign up
the ebook era adds a weird dimension to digital rights stuff—like I have a nypl card and my gf’s college library has like every book known to man—between the two I can at the moment check out any book I’d ever want w/ a bit of legwork. and when I want to read something I generally do one of the two. otoh, if I found and illegally dl’d that same book for a kindle, it somehow seems harder to defend?
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.
maybe there should be a spotify for books, idk.
xp to self whoa wait does it? I don’t think it used to. I guess it does.
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.
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.
^^^^
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.
or just y’know maybe not wanting to read the one book at a time
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.
Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.
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.”
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
gotta say, when i think of that kind of thing those are the two first names to pop into my head too
ha i just got a nook and its p cool but this thread makes me want to take a hammer to it
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.
Hyperlinks?
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.
yeahh shakey’s environmental accounting is v. 1-dimensional
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.
Do you actually find hyphens distracting? like I promise you every book you’ve ever read has about three words that are hyphenated across a line break per page, are you distracted by them every single time? xp
no
a little distracting yes
what really bugs me is how shitty that sentence is
all books should just be printed on one long fortune cookie fortune
I don’t think the issue is either hyphenating or bad justification — it’s that the column width on most readers is so small that either one would need to do massive overtime to correctly set the text, and intrude pretty obnoxiously.
one word at a time is a good way to read
there’s a left-justified example of the lorem ipsum paragraph in the link. it doesn’t look v good either tbh
these are actually sub ms-word algorithms they’re using; kerning is somewhat better in word since the last big redo. i don’t really get why something that ought to be a core technology on these is so slapdash.
i find this a deeply odd argt.:
I appreciate a typesetter advising me with which font to use, but now the tech exists to change it, I would be mighty annoyed if it was taken away.
bcz typesetting is a craft with half a millenium of experience and weight behind it; there are people who are just good at this—! otoh i did just go look up the physical version of that novel on amazon and that’s pretty shoddily set too tbh so
I don’t think the issue is either hyphenating or bad justification — it’s that the column width on most readers is so small that either one would need to do massive overtime to correctly set the text, and intrude pretty obnoxiously.
thank you for articulating what was really bothering me, there we go^^^^
maybe that’s why I don’t like reading on e-readers, the page is too small!
I fear the day when my eyesight goes and I can’t use teeny tiny fonts anymore
all books should just be printed on one long fortune cookie fortune
I’ve got three books open on my desk. One of them is 1Q84; it’s got +/- 44 lines of text per page, +/- 100 characters per line. There are 0–3 hyphens per page, and only prominent – immediately noticeable—weird spacing due to justification. The text is fairly dense, and it easily absorbs a lot of spacing issues w/o seeming too deliberate. I have yet to see an ereader/electronic screen that can display that amount of information in a way that is not overwhelming or eyestrain inducing...
there’s also stuff like—pretty much all faber poetry is typeset the same way. it’s a part of how the meaning and the weight of the words you read are constructed. i’m not sure i like the idea of taking that away from the interaction you have with the text. (there’s an argument that having personae reduced to the same standards as a self-published .epub of poetry about vampires is a democratic step forwards and a good thing but i think it’s an argument that’s basically wrong.)
xpost yeah that’s another thing — pretty sure that a lot of ppl who read a lot will use this things with smaller text; screenshots always seem to have like a 35–45 character wide line. (this is in part bcz if you want a screenshot that works on a monitor which is most likely going to have a smaller dpi you need to not use the smallest text size.)
only ONE prominent—immediately noticeable – spacing due to justification.
hyphenating bothers me a lot more than weird spacing. I only notice weird spacing in extreme cases. Not being able to read a whole word without moving my eyes from one side of a page to the other is way worse. I notice it every time even after 20+ years of reading books.
hyphenating to facilitate a line break is a crude last resort, compared to deft leding
ur thinking of kerning/tracking
Woot’s got refurbished Kindle DXs for $199 today.
Main problem with the Sony one—or my first gen one at least—is that it has a separate socket for charging and won’t charge through the USB socket. Which sucks if you forget to charge it beforehand and to bring the right cable when you go home for Xmas.
Weird thing about the syncing is that in my experience the Kindle iPhone app will try to sync to the last page read on the actual Kindle, but not vice-versa.
Just got me one of these things today. Trying to figure out how to hack it.
Had a look at my dad’s kindle. Not the latest gen, has a keyboard, but page turning still a lot faster than my v old Sony, and can see the use in having a keyboard for searching. Wifi connection handy too although my uncle wanted to know how much the new Clive Cussler would cost so i took a look at the price, then went back to the home screen—or so I thought. Turned out I’d bought the damn thing, although I never clicked the ‘buy’ button and certainly didn’t see any confirmation screen :|
one of my law partners is obsessed with reading books on his cell phone and — even moreso — audiobooks. i have no interest in either option. i want to feel a book in my hands. it’s weight, packaging, the pages themselves add something to the experience for me that an efficient machine (or the assistance of a narrating voice) will never match.
I love reading books on my phone on the train while commuting
ditto, it’s amazing.
C’mon people don’t really give a shit about “the feeling of the paper”
and stuff, is that really what you’re thinking abt when you read?
I’m pretty sure my e-copy of Nixon has the same words in it as the physical copy
If reading text doesn’t provide enough excitement by itself, maybe you hate reading
no. i like reading. i get no feel or excitement from the technology. feels very cold to me.
i can read!
read a book just last year, in fact.
bizarre.
true story.
I just don’t get this hypersensitivity, like is it impossible for you to read an ebook because you can’t stop thinking about how “cold” it is?
The Internet is even colder
it’s really not hypersensitivity. i’m not adamantly against kindles and similar devices; i just prefer physical books.
i also prefer vinyl to compact discs, and compact discs to mp3s. but i’ve made the switch to mp3s because they’re so much cheaper. if the price-gap with physical and electronic books reaches those levels, i’d likely go with a kindle-type device.
alright fine but you could have mentioned that in the first place before I started goin all hardman
merry christmas!
(from a jew)
The tactile qualities of a physical book are a bonus for me.
kindle evangelists really will not stand for any dissenting point of view, will they
You are a ding dong. xpost Jesse.
That is not what the content of this thread would show. At all.
Xpost to lex
Also to lex, you are a ding dong.
you know he won’t be swayed by anything resembling a fact, right?
William (C)
i don’t really get the impression that you think there are any valid facts or reasons not to want a kindle
The tactile qualities of a physical book are a bonus for me.
― Sandbox Jesse, Sunday, December 25, 2011 9:11 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink
Dont agree with ding dongs.
The ergonomics of books are pretty important (re: paper feel, etc.)—mass-market paperbacks usually have shitty printing and paper and especially with longer books are unpleasant to read. I don’t like hardbacks in general (more of a pain to carry and read), but I especially don’t like books with uneven pages opposite the binding.
Reading a quality trade paperback is probably still better than on a e-ink reader, but I’ll take my Kindle over mass market pbs or hardcovers whenever possible.
Simply not wanting an ereader is reason enough for me.
I have the ability to see why one would want one
And reasons one would not want one.
I have problems with the unilateral damnation of them with attendant refusal to acknowledge any good in them, “lalala no no no not listening.”
Xp
Ok, got the thing working. Not bad, but I already brought 4 other books with me on this trip along
Overall experience of reading physical book still the best. The iPhone is obviously the most portable but after a while the glare causes a bit of eyestrain, find it good for reading samples but not whole books. The Kindle device with the e-ink splits the difference.
I like my iPhone Kindle app for non-fiction, stuff I can pop into for a few pages while I’m in line somewhere. Can’t get into novels that way, though.
amazon kinder
I just got one for Christmas! And I can apparently get books from the library, which was one of my main concerns.
Dont agree with ding dongs.
No one was agreeing with me. Or with lex.
I don’t care if people like kindles or not but the whole “books are better because they have soul” thing is dumb as hell. Hearing about how people like to run their fingers through pages is gross.
I mean, what the hell is this “experience” people talk about wrt real books? Is it erotic?
sometimes.
brb . . .
Sensual yes, erotic no.
What books have going for them is that, when they are well-designed, they represent the culmination of many centuries of design iterations and refinements. otoh, only some books are designed with that level of care and knowledge. Cost factors almost always rule the book design process, so in a typical year you get a ton of shitty airport-bookrack mass paperbacks, a plethora of mid-range coffee table books, a smattering of oddly sized and self-concious “look at me” designs, plus a few well-printed literary books that make good use of quality paper, binding, typeface and typesetting.
Hearing about how people like to run their fingers through pages is gross.
― moonbop, Sunday, December 25, 2011 11:11 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Permalink
haha
this all just seems to be an extra expense. you can pick up cheap paperbacks, secondhand books everywhere. ridiculously cheap on like abebooks for example. i bought the new biographical dictionary of film for £2 secondhand hardback including delivery but its closer to £20 as an ebook. it just seems like you would need to be reading A LOT for these to make any sense economically. especially when books do not come super cheap. i mean w/ mp3 its like yes well you always need some sort of player for audio or video but with books you never needed like an extra thing (unless you count like “light” and reading glasses)
i mean there are obviously pros and cons. i think talking about these things not having souls is kindof unhelpful. just think how nostalgic people will be for these rudimentary gizmos in a few decades.
Xp you know there’s a whole load of legit free out-of-copyright ebooks out there.
oh yeah i’m sure. its kindof stupid to posit this as a straight binary but like what if you’re really into sci-fi and you can just constantly pick up a barrage of cheap paperbacks. kindle requires this upfront investment that other reading doesnt and if the books are not super cheap its not like you make that money back. i just assumed ebooks were gonna be super cheap when i first heard of them. it was a surprise to me that they were gonna be priced as though they were, like, books.
i mean people who want one should buy one. i just keep thinking of this guy i know who bought one and then spent about a month reading some lame indie magazine off it and he kept talking about how it was free but i was like really you have to divide the price of the machine across the number of books you read on it and people who don’t really actually read that much are paying proportionally higher. like i get that if you are planning on reading a lot of 19th century literature it might make sense and its a fun gadget but like
Speaking of sci-fi, the sf gateway seems to be about as cheap as buying the used paperback for those old out-of-print classics.
That lame indie reader’s analysis reminds me of this discussion:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/an-sdjDJt4b2h7b4/the_lonely_guy_1984_talk_about_hair/
Have y’ll been fronting on not seeing this BBC documentary on this very subject? It’s kinda rambly but really quite interesting.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01871m9/hd/Imagine_Winter_2011_Books_The_Last_Chapter/
I’d watch it if it was available in my country.
I use the US version of this software to watch US TV stuff despite being in the UK. Only turn it on when you’re actually watching something cos browsing with it on is supremely annoying, but it’s good for what it does.
http://download.cnet.com/Expat-Shield/3000-2092_4-75211377.html
That’s a slick little thing. Sadly, I’m on a Mac.
the states are a different country, and you can never BookMac
lol @ “switch on a whole fucking machine”—like that’s harder these days than “open a whole fucking book at the last page I was reading”
― mortified of ILX (onimo)
So I got a kindle and it turns out that, as I thought, you press one (1) button and the whole fucking machine starts up at the last page you were reading in less than 2 (two) seconds.
I’ve read one and a bit ebooks since Christmas and it feels like... reading. I don’t feel I’m really missing any tactile or sensual experience, but then I usually read cheap/used paperbacks.
I agree with some of the concerns upthread about spacing/justification but it hasn’t bothered me too much—I’m used to seeing a similar thing in newspapers.
“switch on a whole fucking machine”
Indeed. There are thousands of circuits and valves and tubes. How can the average man be expected to learn how to make them work?
/trying to switch on a dead horse
quick question as i’ve just got one of them machines. i have a couple of books in rtf format that i need to convert to epub. so i downloaded calibre. is there anything to set up in the options before converting to a new format or do i just click on convert and hope for the best?
forget if i’ve already posted this but while ebook prices are usually too high to make any sense (on amazon they are often higher than the price of the physical book), plug project gutenberg into one of these and the world changes.
Given my penchant for used books and hole-and-corner odd books, I would not consider an ebook reader at all, if it weren’t for free book sources like Project Gutenberg and the growing number of ebooks at the public library.
Though I’ve seen some books on Amazon where the Kindle and physical prices were the same, I don’t think I’ve run across any where the Kindle version was more than the physical book. Being able to rent a textbook on the Kindle for a class I was taking (~$24 for 6 months) vs. buying the physical book (for ~$180) was interesting.
Holy crap, that’s a game changer. I am going to be back in school pretty soon and I hope like hell I can rent my textbooks!
textbook rental is a beautiful thing yeah.
I had no idea that was possible. And I’ve only been out of the textbook market for less than a year.
i have two copies of ‘postwar’ if you want one
i ended up making it part of my annual book-raid on my parents’ house (along with two volumes of robert a. caro’s a song of ice and johnson; the plane home was the first time in my life i’ve struggled w/ the overhead bins). much thx tho!
(did you like postwar?)
yes v much so
me too.
wait there’s textbook rental??? swoon
Amazon UK is doing a ’12 days of kindle’ with lots of good, cheap (99p) titles: http://www.amazon.co.uk/b?ie=UTF8&node=1503253031
I looked to see if Amazon.com is doing the same but it seems not—I could only find a list of ‘$3.99 or below’ titles that all looked shit.
You can rent physical text books, too—http://www.bookrenter.com/
I’ve rented text books. I’ve also sold text books I’ve found in dumpsters. Protip for all the hobos out there, untapped market.
I just want a cheap source of 60’s scifi stuff. Tho, this format seems to work with all the classic short-story collections put out back then.
i picked up the entire wheel of time series for free, that was pretty economical imo
jibe i had to convert those, fwiw- i used an online converter but can’t remember what it was called so i’m not actually any use to you but there you go
me too.
have you read ‘ill fares the land’? i cant recommend it highly enough tbh
ha thanks darragh. i’ll see how those books come out without any settings modified.
thanks to the democratization of publishing my friend who is way better at writing lots and lots of words than he is at writing good ones now has a bunch of ebooks in the kindle store. I don’t recommend spending yr money.
unless you want to read his self-insert fantasies about managing a rock band or being a computer hacker and dating large-breasted women
have you read ‘ill fares the land’? i cant recommend it highly enough tbh
― є(٥_ ٥)э, Thursday, December 29, 2011 6:16 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Permalink
yeah i read this in like two hours and immediately donated my copy to the occupy portland library; as a (very personal and rightly so) manifesto against The Problem it’s sterling.