E-reader....yes or no?
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YES!!! An e-reader is a wonderful device. I have a K2 and a Kindle Fire. I love them both. The K2 is perfect for reading, I love the eink screen. It is very easy to read, indoors or outside in bright light. I got a great booklight for reading at night. One advantage is the book light has to cover only one page, instead of two pages with a regular book. AND it is so easy to borrow books from the library or buy new books, you don't have to go anywhere. Through Amazon I have gotten thousands of free books, and have borrow a ton from my library. My spending on books has dropped significantly.
The Fire is harder to read on, but is a great device for media consumption-- instant videos, checking email, browsing the internet. I found I can only read on it for about an hour before I need a break.
If you have text to speech on your e device (not all versions have it) and you are reading while on a treadmill or elliptical, you can turn on the TTS, turn the volume down or off, and then it automatically turns the pages for you while you are exercising.
Amazon's customer service is wonderful!0 -
Love my Kindle. Service was great when it got zapped by a "scanner" through the airport. (Um ... I'm not taking mine through security in the future, for the record).
That is something to consider, as I read a lot when I travel. Was it zapped because it was "on"? I thought electronics were safe to place through scanners at security, or at least they tell you it is safe.
I've flown with my nook at least 12 times in the last year and never had a problem
I never power it all the way off going through security. 0 -
I am glad you posted this. I am just finishing college classes in 2 weeks. I LOVE reading. I am thinking about buying one type. I haven't thought about what type to get or if I would like it. But, everyone that I know that loves to read and has one says they are wonderful.0
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I hate E-readers in principle - give me the smell and feel of a real book any day! But I grudgingly admit that I like them in practice! Having been on holiday and able to take multiple books that take up no room is worth the loss of sensation. I use Kindle on my ipad and iphone and love the way it syncs to my latest reading place between the two. Also, I wouldn't necessarily carry a book about with me but having the kindle app on my phone I always have something to read when I'm stuck in situations that require waiting around.
But I think I'm still a "Real" book person at heart!0 -
I'm an avid reader and a few years ago I never dreamed I would enjoy one. But I bought the Kindle when the prices finally went down and love it. I don't read all my books on it. Books such as exercise and fitness books are better in the original format. But fiction books and most non-fiction if not used as a reference are very enjoyable on an e-reader. I also like the fact it has text to speech. So if you're say washing dishes and wish you could read - you can! Just set it to text to speech and it reads to you. I think you'd enjoy it. And getting new books instantly is a thrill.
Bad thing is you don't have a physical book to sell when you're finished. So I guess in a way it's a bit more expensive. And you don't have a room full of books. I love books and keep a lot in my home but there are some books that are pretty much a one-time read.
Give it a try.0 -
My wife loves her Kindle...I'll stick with my Ipad.0
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"It's the mental furniture that matters".The Way We Read Now
By DWIGHT GARNER
THE case against electronic books has been made, and elegantly, by many people, including Nicholson Baker in The New Yorker a few years ago. Mr. Baker called Amazon’s Kindle, in a memorable put-down, “the Bowflex of bookishness: something expensive that, when you commit to it, forces you to do more of whatever it is you think you should be doing more of.”
The best case I’ve seen for electronic books, however, arrived just last month, on the Web site of The New York Review of Books. The novelist Tim Parks proposed that e-books offered “a more austere, direct engagement” with words. What’s more, no dictator can burn one. His persuasive bottom line: “This is a medium for grown-ups.”
I’ve been trying to become more of a grown-up, in terms of my commitment to reading across what media geeks call “platforms” (a word that’s much sexier when applied to heels), from smartphones to e-readers to tablets to laptops.
It’s a battle I may lose. I still prefer to consume sentences the old-fashioned and nongreen way, on the pulped carcasses of trees that have had their throats slit. I can imagine my tweener kids, in a few years, beginning to picket me for my murderous habits: “No (tree) blood for (narrative) oil.”
It’s time to start thinking, however, about the best literary uses for these devices. Are some reading materials better suited to one platform than another? Does Philip Larkin feel at home on an iPad, and Lorrie Moore on a Kindle? Can I make a Kay Ryan poem my ringtone? Will any gizmo make “The Fountainhead” palatable?
Books used to pile up by my bedside; sometimes it now seems that gadgets do, the standby power of their LED lights staring at me like unfed dogs. Let’s talk about these machines, and their literary uses, in order of size, from small to large.
The Smartphone
The smartphone has clearly been recent technology’s greatest gift to literacy. Carrying one obliterates one’s greatest fear: of being trapped somewhere — a train, the D.M.V., a toilet — with nothing whatsoever to read.
Most of what I devour on my phone is journalism: out-of-town newspapers and links gleaned from Twitter and Facebook. Ben Franklin would have liked this palm-size medium. He’s the founding father who said, “Read much, but not too many books.”
Franklin’s autobiography happens to be an ideal thing to have on your phone. It’s in the public domain, and thus free for the Kindle app. Here’s another unlikely choice: John Cheever’s “Journals,” the most underrated nonfiction book of the 20th century. Cheever’s entries are bite-size yet profound. They are aching when not outright grim; they’ll place the soul-killing events in your own life in context, and may even cheer you up.
I frequently seem to be scanning my iPhone in restaurants, while waiting to order or eating alone at the counter. I like to read about food before a meal; it sharpens the appetite and can lead to drooling. Two favorites are memoirs: “The Raw and the Cooked,” by Jim Harrison, my true north of food writers, and “Blood, Bones & Butter,” by Gabrielle Hamilton. Scrolling through Ms. Hamilton’s memoir, you’ll find this shrewd bit of advice: “Be careful what you get good at doin’ ’cause you’ll be doin’ it the rest of your life.”
Keep an audio book or two on your iPhone. Periodically I take the largest of my family’s dogs on long walks, and I stick my iPhone in my shirt pocket, its tiny speaker facing up. I’ve listened to Saul Bellow’s “Herzog” this way. The shirt pocket method is better than using ear buds, which block out the natural world. My wife tucks her phone into her bra, on long walks, and listens to ****ens novels. I find this unbearably sexy.
E-Readers
More fetching than a girl with a dragon tattoo has always been a girl with a Penguin Classic. With e-books, you have no idea what anyone is reading. This is an incalculable loss, not just to fleeting crushes but to civilization.
That said, e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle strike me as the most intimate, and thus sexiest, of these devices. They’re the Teddy Pendergrass of platforms. On most, the text isn’t backlit, and thus trying too hard, always a turnoff. You are less inclined to cheat on one — that is, to read e-mail or surf the Web. In reading, like love, fidelity matters.
Because e-books don’t have covers, teenagers may find it easier to consume the books some parents used to confiscate — “Forever,” by Judy Blume, “Flowers in the Attic,” by V. C. Andrews. Their parents will think they are playing Angry Birds.
I’m an admirer of Jonathan Franzen, the gifted novelist who has been outspoken about his dislike of electronic books. But if you aren’t a fan of Mr. Franzen’s, I would guess that reading his novels on a Kindle, a device he loathes, might be considered a literary form of hate sex.
E-readers, excellent for singles — short, novella-length books — are also the platform to turn to when going long, when it’s time to finally pick up Roberto Bolaño’s “2666” or Thomas Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow” or William Gaddis’s “The Recognitions.” (Shop local, when you can. Ask your local independent bookseller about buying e-books through them.)
The iPad
The iPad, for me, is thus far the place to toss the kind of big nonfiction books I’m probably going to attentively skim rather than read — Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography, for example, or “Reading for My Life: Writings, 1958-2008,” by the superb cultural critic John Leonard.
I like, too, that some of these nonfiction books offer electronic footnotes that take you straight to a source. Those sources are sometimes much better than the book you are holding. There are often more unusual things to click. The iPad app for Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” for example, is a sensorium of maps and timelines and other things, in addition to the text. “Whither goes thou, America,” he writes, here as in the paper version, “in thy shiny car in the night?”
I’m not sold on these kinds of add-ons, lovely as they are. If I want TV, I have one. But I can imagine a young person being wooed. Art books, too — many of them are available free — are a treat on the iPad. The clarity is breathtaking, like a snort of some visual drug.
I’ve tried poetry on each of these platforms: Larkin, ****inson, Philip Levine, Amy Clampitt. It’s not happening, at least not for me. There’s not enough white space, nor silence. The poems seem shrunken and trapped, like lobsters half-dead in a supermarket glass pen, their claws rubber-banded. Poems should be printed on paper, or carved onto the dried husks of coconuts, so one can hoard them.
The one bit of verse that charmed me, when read on the iPad, was Clive James’s brilliant and witty “The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered.” This poem forces you to wonder: What will remainders look like in our digital future? Where’s the 99-cents bin going to be?
You can’t read an e-book in the tub. You can’t fling one across the room, aiming, as Mark Twain liked to do, at a cat. And e-books will not furnish a room.
Writing in The Times in 1991, Anna Quindlen declared, “I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.”
I am so down with that. But it’s the mental furniture that matters.0 -
I am in Canada, and our main book store is either Amazon.ca or Chapters (Indigo). I see they are doing preorders for the Kobo Glo right now for early October, and it looks promising. I would probably go with it or Sony for the library rental feature, and since Chapters sells it, I would definitely be able to get books for it.0
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I have a Nook from Barnes and Nobel and absolutely love it! I got the entry level reader two years ago and just upgraded to the Nook Tablet. I did not think I would like it before I tried it but now I am totally hooked! Finish a book at 11:00 p.m. and want to shop for another one, no prioblem just go to shop. Need a word defined, no need for digging out the dictionary just put your finger on the word and you get the definition. Want to highlight a passage, you can do that with the swipe of your finger. You can change font type, size and orintation to fit your taste. You can lend books in your library to friends with a Nook. I purchased the book cover for my Nook so it would "feel" more like holding a real book but the tablet fits so perfectly in my hand I have never used it. Shop around to see what fits you and your needs but I am one guy that will never go back.0
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I've been reading on Nook 1st edition for years, I absolutely love it! Every Friday B&N has Free Fridays... they pick out a free book, and then other readers post what they've found for free.
I am the admin for the Facebook Page of Free Nook Books
https://www.facebook.com/NookBooksThatIFindThatAreFree
we have 1500+ fans so far and we share free books there.
and my husband has a kindle 0 -
I have two Kindles, but there is a constantly growing and changing pile of paperbacks next to my bed at all times. There's just something about the physical experience of reading a book that adds to the experience for me. The tactile sensation and even the smell of a new paperback just pulls some trigger in my brain, it is hard to explain.0
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I love my Nook Color. I can read at night with all the lights off (and not disturb the hubby) with the screen set to a black background and the lowest light setting.0
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I love my Sony eReader.
Never expected that, but it happened.
I love reading since I was four years old and I read a lot of books, which need a lot of space in my home.
Now all my books are in this small Sony.
Our public librarys in Germany offer the option to borrow ebooks there. You can borrow them online whenever you have time.
They do it in epub format, so I need a reader which is compatible with it.
That's why I don't have the kindle.0 -
Lots to think about. Got a very bad review (and more online) for customer service for repairs and troubles with the Kobo, so will have to see if that has improved. Sony's newest reader had horrible reviews on the web site since they went plastic, removed the headphone jack and took out 3 of the international dictionaries. Kindle is possible, but can't use the library lend feature here in Canada.0
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I have an ipad and I love reading on it!0
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I love, love, love my kindle! Make sure to get the version that isn't backlit.0
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We've got 3 different kindles and I love them all. Some you can read in bright sunlight, some you cant, so take that into consideration if you plan on reading in the sunlight like I do at our pool or the beach.0
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I love my Kindle as well. It's older version keyboard version, but I read on it constantly. Really, the ability to increase the font size lets me read for pleasure again. It's been a real Godsend for me. The new lighted one is intriguing, I may just get that one.
Edit to Add: Too many people think of books as nothing but decoration, something to line up on the shelves and look pretty. That makes me sad.0 -
My husband bought me an inexpensive one from wal-mart online about two years ago as an anniversary present and I love it don't leave home without it. Not to mention most my favorite authors I can get thier books. My sister in-law downloads them from different sites and passes them one. Best investment ever.0
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I would not want to go through school without my kindle. My professors like to give me pdfs of notes. I don't like to read them on the computer as it'll strain my eyes, but printing them out would take a lot of ink and paper. So I put them on my kindle instead and I'll have all the notes together on one device I can bring to class with me. Also, I have difficulties reading fast from a learning disorder I have, so I have used the read-out-loud feature and it helped me with finishing my daily readings during my more intense school schedules. Unfortunately, none of my textbooks this semester have digital copies
As far as fiction, though, everything is offered digitally these days. Even Harry Potter is finally getting its digital release. 0 -
I've started reading again when I bought my Sony eReader because I can change the size of the text. Just too resistant to get glasses I suppose. My arms weren't long enough, and I wasn't reading because of it, but that's changed.
Also, I can read in bed again thanks to the cover with light I purchased separately with it. Husband had banned the bedside table lamp I used to use.0 -
I was resistant, but I love having a Nook.
Not that I'd ever read pirated material or anything
but I've "heard" that you can often find free ebooks online if you search for .epub files. 0 -
I have a Nook and a Kindle Fire. I really like that any book I want is instantly at my fingertips. I take my Kindle on vacation so I have a wide choice of books and it doesn't take up any room at all.
You can subscribe to email lists that will email you daily what Amazon books are being offered for free. Its a great way to find new authors and some established authors put some of their backlist for free. Probably half of my books on my Kindle I got for free or $.99 or less.
However, I still like reading paper books. There is nothing that will replace them in my mind. Just like the computer didn't replace the pencil, the ereader won't replace a good old-fashioned paperback.0 -
My Kindle was great. I just preordered a Kindle Paperwhite 3G to replace my Kindle DX.
Though if I really like a book I'll buy the hardcover.0 -
I have a NOOK tablet and love it. Books, magazines and internet all in one place. I had no problem reading at the beach or pool while on vacation with it. I think going to the store and playing with them is the best idea. Good luck.0
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I resisted e-readers for a long time, but I have to say I really love my Kindle Touch.
You can read it in bright light (including outdoors), it has on-board dictionaries, you can track people or places mentioned in any book, etc.
I'm tempted by the new Paperwhite Kindle which has a built-in light, but as I've had my current Kindle less than a year, can't justify the expense.
I do recommend going to store and playing with the physical models prior to making a purchase decision. I went to a Staples and played with all the then-available Kindles before buying.
Also recommend buying some sort of protective case, especially if you'll be throwing this into a briefcase or handbag. E-readers are pretty sturdy, but not indestructible!0 -
Lots of good input.....will definitely be going to some stores and playing around with them when I get home to find a model that suits me.0
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I'm excited, I'm going to pre-order the Kindle Paperwhite here soon.) 0
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I've just bought a Kindle and it seems OK but I much prefer books. Only reason I have bought it is because I am going away next month and only have 15kg luggage and 5kg hand luggage- I need to take about 20 books with me so I have to buy one really!0
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I didnt think I would take to a kindle at first, and it took a bit of getting used to but I have to say it is one of the best (if not the best present) I have ever received. I take it everywhere and love the fact that I can read several books at once without having to carry them about, or faff about trying to find the last page I read etc. I wouldnt be without it now, that said there are books in paperform that I will continue to buy and read such as cook books or illustrated books0
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