Last night.
It occurred to me last night, I hadn’t read it because it was too big to conveniently take with me places and was too heavy to comfortably read in bed. My Dear Wife asked why I didn’t just get a Kindle copy.
Well?
While I really don’t like buying the same book twice, I really do prefer e-books now. So I bought the e-book.
Why do I like e-books so much? A number of reasons.
- As I hinted at above, I’m a big fan of my iPad tablet, and it goes with me almost everywhere. It’s a great platform to read on. It’s not very heavy. And it adjusts the background and brightness to the conditions around me. And Amazon’s Kindles are good readers as well.
- It weighs less than a lot of the books I want to read.
- It keeps track of where I am in the book.
- It’s easy to highlight text or take notes on the text. (Not so important when I’m reading for pleasure, but much more significant with work reading.)
- I can have instant gratification. If I want a book and it’s available in e-book format, I can have access to it instantly. (This sometimes is not such great thing.)
- I don’t have to worry about losing the book in our big home library. I buy a lot of books for research at the moment I discover them, but I may not be reading them for months or even a year or two. By that point I might not know where the book is or even remember that I bought it. But if it’s on my e-book reading list, I know exactly where it is. Of course, a lot of the books I get are out-of-print used books only available in physical form, which is fine. But now I have fewer of those to keep track of.
And finally… my Dear Wife and I love books, and every bit of open wall space in our house is covered with bookshelves. And all of those book shelves are at capacity. So when new physical books come in, lesser desired ones need to go out. E-books let me help dodge that problem.
I understand completely why people love physical books. We have a good collection of autographed books in the house. And I do love the heft and feel of a physical book. (But that heft and feel can also be a disadvantage.) And I totally get that people need time away from technology and screens. (My Dear Wife only reads books in paper form.)
I’ve heard a number of people say to me that they don’t like reading e-books on their computer or their phone, and I agree with them wholeheartedly! Neither of those are great platforms for reading a book. (Unless, perhaps, you have one of those giant big-*ss phones that I refuse to have.)
But a good e-book reader like a Kindle or a high-quality tablet like my iPad Pro can be an easy-on-the-eyes-and-wrist way to read. My late mum-in-law was a long-time Kindle user because the reader let her turn every book she bought into a large-print book.
How do you feel about e-books vs.paper books? (Please note, they are all “real” books.)