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e-readers are amazing!

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Alex C:
Bottom line, if you condescend to people on this forum, you will get called out on it. You're not going to get a gold star and some street cred for restraint on this particular forum just because you implied someone is an idiot rather than actually typed it out.

Barmymoo:
I believe Stephen is the penis-melon in question.


AnAverageWriter, I'm intrigued as to what you mean by "your kind". Do you mean people who like books? People who like reading? People who misunderstand the purpose of a discussion? You are fully entitled to have your own opinion. You are allowed to express that opinion. It's even allowed to be opposing to everyone else's! This isn't Congress, you're not trying to sway people's opinions in order to change the way things turn out. E readers exist regardless of whether you like them or not. If you don't like them, don't buy one - that way you'll be doing your bit to ensure books don't die out.

I really love books, I love seeing them lined up on my shelf, I love waking up to find one next to my pillow, I love the feel of the pages and the different covers and having a physical representation of how much I have read. But sadly I can't afford to buy every book I want to read, and I don't have the opportunity to get them all from the library. An e-reader would allow me to read as much as I wanted but I guarantee that I would go out and buy physical copies of books I really loved.

I take your point about passing along books, because I'm looking forwards to doing that too. I've got a special collectors' edition copy of the complete works of Beatrix Potter I intend to hand on, for a start. But really for me it's the content of the book which matters and that is much more likely to be preserved by e-readers. An important thing to consider is the fact that publishers just stop printing books if they aren't being sold very well, whereas a digital copy can be replicated if there's demand for it.

AnAverageWriter:

--- Quote from: Barmymoo on 30 Jan 2011, 11:24 ---I believe Stephen is the penis-melon in question.
AnAverageWriter, I'm intrigued as to what you mean by "your kind".
--- End quote ---

I was referring in that instance to the individual who took my entire post and insinuated that it was nothing but an old-fashioned, quaint, outdated longing for book smells. I do have a concern for the future of print. I've seen authors abandon it firsthand- which was why I mentioned Warren Adler.

I'm sure I'll get mocked for this post too.

jhocking:
Since you are so sure e-readers don't have any positive points themselves I wonder if you've considered this: e-readers enable people to read more often. Both in the access sense (note SWM's post at the top of the thread; he didn't have to plan out his reading ahead of time) and in the sense of being more convenient to carry around (I know plenty of people who read books a Kindle on their train ride that they aren't about to start carrying around.) Starting from an assumption that more people reading is a good thing (and if you disagree with that then, um, I'm not sure what to say) then e-readers do have the positive characteristic of causing more reading to happen.

I point this out not to discard the positive aspects of books (indeed, every person who's posted in this thread appears to love books, not sure where you got the idea that we don't) but rather because you don't seem to see any positives to e-readers.

Also, you keep mentioning authors who are abandoning print books; what exactly is the reason you think they are making this decision?

Ozymandias:
Also, now that we have a new page, gonna go ahead and elucidate why you're wrong, despite your eventual continued insistence that you're not.

See, Kat's point about the printing press that you dismissed without debate is actually completely on the money, not because there were luddites among the monasteries, but because those luddites were, in a way, correct. The advent of the press allowed for the spread of literacy and ideas and art, BUT, it began a process that would finally end in the 19th century with large scale mass production of books. The process, of course, was the death of the book itself as an art form, something you claim the e-reader will do. Unfortunately, it's already gone. It can't be made any more dead.

In fact, with the advent of the e-reader, it might be able to have new life breathed into it. Now in order to sell a physical book, that book has to be worth buying. It's not something you have to buy just to read the words inside and, thus, it no longer merely has to be functional, it now also has to be beautiful. It has to be worthy of its contents.

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