So books...what can I say about books? I love them. I couldn't be without them. I love the smell of them, the feel of them, the joy I get from turning pages and wondering what will happen next in the story...I really couldn't live without books. If I spend too long without one and with nothing at all to read, I get antsy.
I have a lot of favourite books that I have read many times, and that I own numerous copies of. Alice's Adventure's In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass are probably my most favourite books - I have several different copies of both. And I really can't imagine parting with any of them. A couple are antiques.
A lot has been said recently about the e-book (see Sony Reader at Amazon, and how it's going to get rid of paper books, but I really don't see how it can. Illustrations aren't going to show up as well, and there's a lot to be said about the layouts of books, which I don't think will reflect in e-books. Of course, the fact that you would carry 160 books about at once could be useful, but then, who actually needs that many books at once? And I don't know about you, but I personally would begrudge paying again for copies of books I already own just so I can carry them about on a peice of technology.
So, there we go. Books.
2 comments:
I love books too, I collect them, I find it hard to part with them and I'm never more than about 2ft from one! Along with my stationery fetish, books are what nourish me every day. The Sony e-reader will never catch on, how can you read the classics from a screen? I need the romance of the written page, the smell of the paper and print, the feel of the thin and curled pages.... ah must go and read something now....
As a traveller (not the smelly type that steals your dog and shits in your garden), the e-reader variations hold a bit of interest for me. When you're limited by the weight of your luggage on budget flights, being able to carry even 10 books in a device that weight 250g is definitely worthwhile.
However, the scope of the device is really limited. If you get a Nintendo DS, for example, there's a cartridge you can buy with 100+ classics on it. And you can play games, surf the net (with another gadget), Brain Train etc. Mind, the screen's not as good as the e-reader.
If the e-reader will accept PDF files or Word docs, then you can download a huge number of classic novels which are now out of copyright.
I agree it doesn't "feel" the same, but the convenience for travelling is excellent. My only quibble is it rules out the second hand sales market, book swapping and the like.
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