3 ms·

I find LED screens hard to read on for long periods of time, but I don't have this problem with e-readers. At this point, I think the attachment that people ha

by vivekd 10y ago

I find LED screens hard to read on for long periods of time, but I don't have this problem with e-readers. At this point, I think the attachment that people have to analog books is purely emotional. There is no practical reason to have books over e-readers. People mention things like the feel of the book, the feel of the paper in your hands, etc. Well I don't particularly like the way paper feels, particularly old paper when it starts to change color and get stiff and slightly misshapen. But even if you do like that sort of thing, in the end that's not what you're after, you don't read books for the feel of the paper or the smell or whatever, you read books because you want a good story or good information. Yes some nostalgia books might be good for paper format for collectors or people who have preferences (like those people who like to vinyl instead of MP3s , but for ever-day, practical reading, digital readers are better in nearly every respect. They are cheaper, they have adjustable fonts, you can make a backup copy of the book and store it in the cloud so you don't have to worry about ever losing your book. You can adjust the font and font size. You can tap twice on any word and instantly get the dictionary definition. If you have a kobo you can save we articles on the kobo for later reading. It automatically keeps your page for you. Bookshelves take up an enormous amount of room, having that in the space of a small notebook is an advantage. It's much more environmentally friendly. By any measure e-books are better. The only mildly sensible detraction I've seen on here is the inability to show off your bookshelf or share books, which frankly I don't care about. I don't care about showing off to other people, that's not why I read, and I can share books just fine without pulling it off a bookshelf and showing it.

kakarot 10y ago
You're confusing your own motivations with the motivations of others. Why do I read literarary works? For the information inside. Why do I read physical books? I like all of the things you mentioned people shouldn't care about. The look, the feel, the physical manifestation, and most of all the smell of a stale book after a few decades. It's lovely. Books fundamentally serve a different purpose for me. Is this preference arbitrary? Yes. Is there anything at all wrong with it? No. The only thing wrong with mass produced books is the carbon footprint. These days we don't even need to cut trees for decent cellulose paper so the argument of deforestation people like to use is only a matter of current industry practices and not the book itself. Instead of condemning the preferences of myself and others, why not try to understand us?
- vivekd 10y ago
  >Why do I read physical books? I like all of the things you mentioned people shouldn't care about. The look, the feel, the physical manifestation, and most of all the smell of a stale book after a few decades. It's lovely. I doubt this is true for everyday reading. Because if that were true you would just open up old books and sniff them and rub them in your hands from time to time. And yet I have never once seen anyone do this. Lets face it, we read books for the words not for the feel for the books. People are just going back to "feel" based sentiments now to justify what they see as a major change in a cherished hobby which they dislike. And while feel based arguments for preserving books aren't completely without merit, they only apply to a narrow type of book and a narrow type of reading (beautiful classic books) and not to actual every day reading. I understand the nice qualities in old classic books. I get the nice feeling of opening up a really old book that has been around for a long time - but that really is a limited scope sort of use that doesn't capture every day use of books, and it's not really connected to the reading - it has more the value that an antique or a collectible has. I think the best example is two copies of Shakespeare I have. One is an old classic version of Shakespeare in hard cover printed on high quality paper with ink illustrations. The other is a college paperback copy of Hamlet with torn covers and introduction pages. The prior might not be a good candidate for replacement with an e-reader but the latter certainly would. But if your goal was just to read Hamlet, both would be just as effective. This isn't to say there isn't a place for the great feeling you get with the hardcover beautiful Shakespeare book, just that the feeling isn't necessarily connected to the actual reading of Hamlet.
  - soulbadguy 10y ago
    You are basicly doubling down on the same fallacies the previous post was pointing to. > I doubt this is true for everyday reading For some of us books are not everyday reading... > Because if that were true you would just open up old books and sniff them and rub them in your hands from time to time. And yet I have never once seen anyone do this. Lets face it, we read books for the words not for the feel for the books Following the same line of thinking, since I never saw anyone eating raw salt I should conclude that people don't really like salt ? You are trying to reduce reading a book to sum of arbitrary components...
WalterBright 10y ago
> It automatically keeps your page for you. If you're reading a PDF on most e-readers, it automatically remembers that you're still on page 1 if you made the mistake of opening 2 or 3 other PDFs in the meantime. This applies to every PDF reader I've tried except Foxit and the older Kindles.
- kakarot 10y ago
  Foxit sometimes does it. Sometimes it even remembers multiple tabs. I don't understand why it doesn't always remember, though.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    It baffles me why the newer Kindle models have regressed on this.
    - kakarot 10y ago
      Do you think it was just a massive oversight or do you think they somehow, some way, stand to make money from removing the feature?

by vivekd 10y ago

kakarot 10y ago

You're confusing your own motivations with the motivations of others. Why do I read literarary works? For the information inside. Why do I read physical books? I like all of the things you mentioned people shouldn't care about. The look, the feel, the physical manifestation, and most of all the smell of a stale book after a few decades. It's lovely. Books fundamentally serve a different purpose for me. Is this preference arbitrary? Yes. Is there anything at all wrong with it? No. The only thing wrong with mass produced books is the carbon footprint. These days we don't even need to cut trees for decent cellulose paper so the argument of deforestation people like to use is only a matter of current industry practices and not the book itself. Instead of condemning the preferences of myself and others, why not try to understand us?

vivekd 10y ago
>Why do I read physical books? I like all of the things you mentioned people shouldn't care about. The look, the feel, the physical manifestation, and most of all the smell of a stale book after a few decades. It's lovely. I doubt this is true for everyday reading. Because if that were true you would just open up old books and sniff them and rub them in your hands from time to time. And yet I have never once seen anyone do this. Lets face it, we read books for the words not for the feel for the books. People are just going back to "feel" based sentiments now to justify what they see as a major change in a cherished hobby which they dislike. And while feel based arguments for preserving books aren't completely without merit, they only apply to a narrow type of book and a narrow type of reading (beautiful classic books) and not to actual every day reading. I understand the nice qualities in old classic books. I get the nice feeling of opening up a really old book that has been around for a long time - but that really is a limited scope sort of use that doesn't capture every day use of books, and it's not really connected to the reading - it has more the value that an antique or a collectible has. I think the best example is two copies of Shakespeare I have. One is an old classic version of Shakespeare in hard cover printed on high quality paper with ink illustrations. The other is a college paperback copy of Hamlet with torn covers and introduction pages. The prior might not be a good candidate for replacement with an e-reader but the latter certainly would. But if your goal was just to read Hamlet, both would be just as effective. This isn't to say there isn't a place for the great feeling you get with the hardcover beautiful Shakespeare book, just that the feeling isn't necessarily connected to the actual reading of Hamlet.
- soulbadguy 10y ago
  You are basicly doubling down on the same fallacies the previous post was pointing to. > I doubt this is true for everyday reading For some of us books are not everyday reading... > Because if that were true you would just open up old books and sniff them and rub them in your hands from time to time. And yet I have never once seen anyone do this. Lets face it, we read books for the words not for the feel for the books Following the same line of thinking, since I never saw anyone eating raw salt I should conclude that people don't really like salt ? You are trying to reduce reading a book to sum of arbitrary components...

WalterBright 10y ago

> It automatically keeps your page for you. If you're reading a PDF on most e-readers, it automatically remembers that you're still on page 1 if you made the mistake of opening 2 or 3 other PDFs in the meantime. This applies to every PDF reader I've tried except Foxit and the older Kindles.

kakarot 10y ago
Foxit sometimes does it. Sometimes it even remembers multiple tabs. I don't understand why it doesn't always remember, though.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  It baffles me why the newer Kindle models have regressed on this.
  - kakarot 10y ago
    Do you think it was just a massive oversight or do you think they somehow, some way, stand to make money from removing the feature?