Wednesday 7 January 2009

Books

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:

Universally Challenged said...

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....

Mosher said...

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.