4 ms·

I thought there would be more "yes" to be honest. I love physical books, I like how they look laying around as a reminder to read them and I like how they disc

I thought there would be more "yes" to be honest. I love physical books, I like how they look laying around as a reminder to read them and I like how they disconnect me from technology. Tried e-readers but I can never stick to them. If I am doing dry reading, I put my computer somewhere near by for dictionary etc And I can move around physical books much more easily and it still feels more natural.

boboguitar 8y ago
Probably because having a kindle doesn't mean you can't read real books. I use my iPad/Kindle app to read most of my books but will still borrow real ones from friends to read.
bspammer 8y ago
The thread has an incredible selection bias - why would anyone who prefers paper books be browsing the /r/kindle subreddit?
coldtea 8y ago
>I thought there would be more "yes" to be honest. Most of those responding aren't old enough to have experience of pre-web real books...
- _eht 8y ago
  Oh, you polled all their ages?
  - muthdra 8y ago
    > Most of those responding aren't old enough to have experience of pre-web real books... [flagged] You aren't old enough to have experienced the pre-printing-press real books. Nowadays they just print everything that comes to their filthy minds, regardless of the content or even position of the author in our society. Just a machine printing away inked paper. Oh, how I miss the good old days when you could feel the woodblock pressure immortalized against the pulp, that subtle off-white coloring; the tasteful thickness of it.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >You aren't old enough to have experienced the pre-printing-press real books That's true. Not sure how it's a counter-argument though. Pre-printing press books were great as well, and even more important (regarding historical importance, and in terms of the price they'd fetch at an auction today) than printing-press books. And it would also be true that having no direct experience of them, I'd be not very qualified to compare them to the printing-press books. Which is my point exactly.
      - muthdra 8y ago
        It's not a counter-argument. I'm making fun of you. Something something beat a river into submission. Go belittle humanity's distribution of knowledge and information elsewhere, prick.
        sctb 8y ago
        That's not what this website is for and continuing to do so will get your account banned. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        muthdra 8y ago
        Ugh, you're actually right. Sorry for being a jerk to someone who just wanted to share his ideas.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    No, I know Reddit's demographics in general, plus how few younger people read books regularly in the US even in the 90s and 80s, never mind in 2014. https://www.techjunkie.com/demographics-reddit/ https://www.techjunkie.com/demographics-reddit/ Any other passive-aggressive question?
mesaframe 8y ago
> I thought there would be more "yes" to be honest. Well, the question is asked in r/kindle. Ofc they are kindle fans; Otherwise they wouldn't have been there at first.
ams6110 8y ago
I'm in this camp. I much prefer paper books, for much the same reasons.
HenryBemis 8y ago
I like books better than any screened material. BUT nowadays I have found extreme comfort in audio books, kindle (Amazon Fire - rooted), and Scrivener on my PC (so I can keep notes)(pause the audio, email myself some thoughts and then copy & paste them on my Scrivener). I got rid of (gave away) about 200 books. I haven't felt better 'minimizing' in my life. Now other people can get value from them, and I don't feel the obligation to read them again.
drcube 8y ago
Why would you expect more people to miss books? Books didn't go anywhere. Anyone who wants them can easily buy them or borrow them. You know what I miss? Dead tree user manuals that used to come with hardware and software. That's something that has gone the way of the Dodo, unlike most other books. Luckily I can still buy printed manuals from the FSF.
- astrodust 8y ago
  With print-on-demand you can make a physical book out of any manual.
  - jl6 8y ago
    I just miss manuals, dead tree or otherwise. Where’s the manual for my iPhone? It’s just a vast unordered, sprawling, inconsistent, incomplete subsection of apple.com.
    - cr0sh 8y ago
      What I miss are schematics and parts lists. Of course, that would be virtually impossible with today's electronics, short of a bunch of PDF documents or something. Even then, they would almost be worthless. But...back in the 1980s, just about any electronic device you bought (especially if you bought it from Radio Shack), the manual would have a schematic in the back, plus a list of parts (and in the case of RS - the parts list would usually have part numbers you could pick up off-the-shelf at the store!). I miss that.
      - astrodust 8y ago
        There's too many black-box chips on a typical product to make any sort of schematic meaningful. There used to be full wiring diagrams for cars in manuals, but imagine that now where your car has 200 separate computerized systems, each with their own intricate circuits.
  - jdsully 8y ago
    That’s the official way to get Intel manuals in print now. Not the same quality as the old ones - but I do like having my complete set ont he shelf.
cybwraith 8y ago
I was surprised about this too. I've recently switched back to buying hardcovers of older books on ebay that I know I'll re-read (library for everything else). In my opinion, a hardcover book is easier to read both in terms of hold and in terms of eye strain. Kindle backlighting is far too pure-white/blue for me to use at night when it would be most useful and the text resolution on the paperwhite I have (can't remember what generation) is nowhere near print quality. I am still sad that physical paging buttons were removed as well. A kindle with adjustable color temperature would be a game-changer for me. It also bugs me that you can't really trade-in a digital copy, and the prices for a digital book are rarely significantly less than a physical book
- frosted-flakes 8y ago
  I know one of the Kobo e-readers has adjustable colour temperature.
mental1896 8y ago
I haven't used an e-reader in many years but I remember it being pretty clunky (kinda like a flip-phone interface). It seems like modern devices ought to have have worked out most of the kinks by now. I should try one out.
commandlinefan 8y ago
I definitely prefer real books when reading technical documentation. However, when I'm at work, as long as I'm staring at a computer screen, nobody bothers me. The minute I start looking at a printed book, somebody with some (real or imagined) authority comes along and says, "watcha readin', commandlinefan? Why are you reading a book? Not enough real work to keep you busy? Why are you reading about Scala, why don't you ask Srinivas, he knows Scala? 'cause you should know by now that nothing matters except the deadlines, just work without understanding what you're doing or looking for optimal ways of implementing things because if we miss those deadlines it doesn't make any difference whatsoever but it's the only fucking thing we keep track of and the only fucking thing we measure performance based off of", so I settle for the far inferior freely available online documentation or the eye-straining PDF scans I can find.

boboguitar 8y ago

Probably because having a kindle doesn't mean you can't read real books. I use my iPad/Kindle app to read most of my books but will still borrow real ones from friends to read.

bspammer 8y ago

The thread has an incredible selection bias - why would anyone who prefers paper books be browsing the /r/kindle subreddit?

coldtea 8y ago

>I thought there would be more "yes" to be honest. Most of those responding aren't old enough to have experience of pre-web real books...

_eht 8y ago
Oh, you polled all their ages?
- muthdra 8y ago
  > Most of those responding aren't old enough to have experience of pre-web real books... [flagged] You aren't old enough to have experienced the pre-printing-press real books. Nowadays they just print everything that comes to their filthy minds, regardless of the content or even position of the author in our society. Just a machine printing away inked paper. Oh, how I miss the good old days when you could feel the woodblock pressure immortalized against the pulp, that subtle off-white coloring; the tasteful thickness of it.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >You aren't old enough to have experienced the pre-printing-press real books That's true. Not sure how it's a counter-argument though. Pre-printing press books were great as well, and even more important (regarding historical importance, and in terms of the price they'd fetch at an auction today) than printing-press books. And it would also be true that having no direct experience of them, I'd be not very qualified to compare them to the printing-press books. Which is my point exactly.
    - muthdra 8y ago
      It's not a counter-argument. I'm making fun of you. Something something beat a river into submission. Go belittle humanity's distribution of knowledge and information elsewhere, prick.
      - sctb 8y ago
        That's not what this website is for and continuing to do so will get your account banned. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        muthdra 8y ago
        Ugh, you're actually right. Sorry for being a jerk to someone who just wanted to share his ideas.
- coldtea 8y ago
  No, I know Reddit's demographics in general, plus how few younger people read books regularly in the US even in the 90s and 80s, never mind in 2014. https://www.techjunkie.com/demographics-reddit/ https://www.techjunkie.com/demographics-reddit/ Any other passive-aggressive question?

mesaframe 8y ago

> I thought there would be more "yes" to be honest. Well, the question is asked in r/kindle. Ofc they are kindle fans; Otherwise they wouldn't have been there at first.

ams6110 8y ago

I'm in this camp. I much prefer paper books, for much the same reasons.

HenryBemis 8y ago

I like books better than any screened material. BUT nowadays I have found extreme comfort in audio books, kindle (Amazon Fire - rooted), and Scrivener on my PC (so I can keep notes)(pause the audio, email myself some thoughts and then copy & paste them on my Scrivener). I got rid of (gave away) about 200 books. I haven't felt better 'minimizing' in my life. Now other people can get value from them, and I don't feel the obligation to read them again.

drcube 8y ago

Why would you expect more people to miss books? Books didn't go anywhere. Anyone who wants them can easily buy them or borrow them. You know what I miss? Dead tree user manuals that used to come with hardware and software. That's something that has gone the way of the Dodo, unlike most other books. Luckily I can still buy printed manuals from the FSF.

astrodust 8y ago
With print-on-demand you can make a physical book out of any manual.
- jl6 8y ago
  I just miss manuals, dead tree or otherwise. Where’s the manual for my iPhone? It’s just a vast unordered, sprawling, inconsistent, incomplete subsection of apple.com.
  - cr0sh 8y ago
    What I miss are schematics and parts lists. Of course, that would be virtually impossible with today's electronics, short of a bunch of PDF documents or something. Even then, they would almost be worthless. But...back in the 1980s, just about any electronic device you bought (especially if you bought it from Radio Shack), the manual would have a schematic in the back, plus a list of parts (and in the case of RS - the parts list would usually have part numbers you could pick up off-the-shelf at the store!). I miss that.
    - astrodust 8y ago
      There's too many black-box chips on a typical product to make any sort of schematic meaningful. There used to be full wiring diagrams for cars in manuals, but imagine that now where your car has 200 separate computerized systems, each with their own intricate circuits.
- jdsully 8y ago
  That’s the official way to get Intel manuals in print now. Not the same quality as the old ones - but I do like having my complete set ont he shelf.

cybwraith 8y ago

I was surprised about this too. I've recently switched back to buying hardcovers of older books on ebay that I know I'll re-read (library for everything else). In my opinion, a hardcover book is easier to read both in terms of hold and in terms of eye strain. Kindle backlighting is far too pure-white/blue for me to use at night when it would be most useful and the text resolution on the paperwhite I have (can't remember what generation) is nowhere near print quality. I am still sad that physical paging buttons were removed as well. A kindle with adjustable color temperature would be a game-changer for me. It also bugs me that you can't really trade-in a digital copy, and the prices for a digital book are rarely significantly less than a physical book

frosted-flakes 8y ago
I know one of the Kobo e-readers has adjustable colour temperature.

mental1896 8y ago

I haven't used an e-reader in many years but I remember it being pretty clunky (kinda like a flip-phone interface). It seems like modern devices ought to have have worked out most of the kinks by now. I should try one out.

commandlinefan 8y ago

I definitely prefer real books when reading technical documentation. However, when I'm at work, as long as I'm staring at a computer screen, nobody bothers me. The minute I start looking at a printed book, somebody with some (real or imagined) authority comes along and says, "watcha readin', commandlinefan? Why are you reading a book? Not enough real work to keep you busy? Why are you reading about Scala, why don't you ask Srinivas, he knows Scala? 'cause you should know by now that nothing matters except the deadlines, just work without understanding what you're doing or looking for optimal ways of implementing things because if we miss those deadlines it doesn't make any difference whatsoever but it's the only fucking thing we keep track of and the only fucking thing we measure performance based off of", so I settle for the far inferior freely available online documentation or the eye-straining PDF scans I can find.