Well, I’ll be a dissenter here. I’ve had my Kindle for about three years, and use it for convenience when I travel, or sitting in waiting rooms, and suchlike. But I vastly prefer reading print books. I find “real” books easier to read, and way more aesthetically pleasing. I can read print books much faster – the page turning on a Kindle is annoyingly slow. If, however, the subject matter is complex enough that I want to be able to page back and to reread something again, the slow page turning is a colossal PITA. Paper and print are infinitely better.
However, it works for lightweight popcorn reading.
Oh! And when electromagnetic pulses wipe out all info stored in the cloud, my library will still be with me.
I love my Kindle and hate how paperback versions of books are often less expensive than the Kindle versions. For instance, all of the Game Of Thrones books? Yeah, I’d totally rather not have that hunk on my bookshelves, unfortunately, a paperback boxed set of the first four is only $12.
I’m a librarian and for my fiction reading I read ebooks almost exclusively. Mostly on the iPad at this point - I have a kindle but almost never pull that device out anymore.
For my professional reading or non- fiction where I’m flipping back and forth I’m still more likely to go paper over e, but the prof reading is slowly gaining in the e-area fr e.
I have the first generation DX and, after all these years, I still love it. I don’t know how I ever lived without being able to buy a book at 3:00 AM, or while sitting in a park. Instant gratification is my middle name and my Kindle gives it to me.
The one thing I wish it had, which I never thought I’d want, or admit to wanting, is a color display.
I got a Kindle Fire because I couldn’t imagine wanting JUST an e-reader; seemed like a waste of money. AND I only got that because Dance of Dragons was so fucking huge it was hurting my wrists to read it. Seriously. And that’s an issue I’ve lived with my whole life, but this one just was the last straw.
While I still have a lot of books, I don’t really buy them in hard print any more. There will the occasional splurge on something I want to have just to have it, but otherwise, yeah. I didn’t expect to love my e-reader but I do.
I’m going to go into my library now and have a good cry…
I don’t own a Kindle and frankly don’t see the point, at least for how I consume books. I’ve played with them in the past and don’t have a particulate distaste for technology (I do almost all my surfing the Dope from my phone, despite having a happily functioning laptop on the desk).
My problem, or lack thereof, is that I love to cross reference books (most of my 3500 books are native American history and history of the pacific northwest). For instance, if I’m reading about Sarah Winnemucca, chances are I’ll stop halfway through one book, find another that talked about life in a piaute village or on the Yakima reservation, or go looking for some old maps. I’ll then return to the original book until something written causes me to digress into another book for more information.
My library is organised by ideas, not by authors or subject. Books that may have no obvious relevance to each other may be placed next to one another on the shelf because I once found that to be the best system of organization.
Frankly, I can’t see how a Kindle would be of any use to me, although I can see how they would have a place in the pocket of someone with more mainstream interests. Also, can’t Amazon “remove” books from your Kindle somehow, even if you’ve paid for them? I seem to remember reading that somewhere here. Their popularity, however, appears to put me solidly in the minority.
Come to the dark side, Ana, we have electronic reading devices.
I am madly in love with my Kindle. If my house were on fire, I’d grab that, and the cat. I’d rather have my Kindle than any other electronic device. I hope I never have to buy another paper book again.
I have the Kindle Touch with e-ink, and that stuff is magical. It really looks like a page - no eye strain.
The only drawback to the Kindle is that it’s way too easy to just buy everything in sight.
I asked for one last Christmas for the same reason. I just got tired of having boxes and boxes of books lying around the house taking up space. I also realized that at some point in the future I was going to be moving and I didn’t want to add more crap to pack and haul. So I ended up getting rid of a significant portion of my book collection (donated to library for sale) and my Kindle means I don’t have a lot of bulky books taking up space.
I honestly thought I’d miss reading regular books but I don’t. Granted, for recreational purposes I don’t typically read a lot of books with graphs, charts and illustrations. For those non-fiction books with all of the above I do find my Kindle to be lacking. But I now prefer using my Kindle to reading a dead tree book.
My husband has the Nook and doesn’t really deal with dead paper anymore either. My book-consumption method is Audible. I think I’ve only bought dead trees for the baby in the last year, aside from this gem: Sacre Bleu: A Comedy d’Art
I like reading e-books fine, I just don’t like buying them. I mostly read library books. I can checkout e-books from my library too, which is great, but the selection is limited. Most of my reading is escapist fiction, which I will only read once. I do love my Kindle app on my PC and my iPhone though, when I use them.
I bought a 2nd Generation Kindle two years ago and then was gifted a Kindle Fire this past Christmas.
Wow.
I will read a paper book if it’s not available in Kindle format but I love my Kindles. They are easy to hold, the Fire doesn’t need a backlight in bed, they keep your place and it fits easily in my (not very big) purse so I can always have it with me. Plus, my library now carries Kindle books and I’ve really gotten some great titles for free. When we moved last year, I got rid of my 300+ book collection except for about 20 I couldn’t part with. It was a bit liberating, to say the least. No more dusting all those books!
My reading has probably tripled since I got the Kindles, just because they are so easy to take everywhere and it takes less effort to find and acquire books. The one-click setting is brilliant.
The page turning? Mine is nearly instantaneous, certainly no longer than it takes to turn a page by hand. My only complaint is the same as yours: trying to go back to find something is pretty hopeless unless it’s been highlighted or bookmarked. I never have the foresight to do that.
Probably because it’s brought up (invariably by a non-Kindle owner) in EVERY SINGLE Kindle thread, when in reality it’s practically a non-issue…there was AFAIK one (heavily publicized) incident 3 years ago when a Amazon removed copies of a book (“1984” - oh, the irony) sold through their site illegally by a non-copyright-holding party when customers who had purchased same synced their devices (and of course refunded their $0.99).
Hi Politzania! Thanks for joining us, and on a side note please let me know when I’ll stop humming “red, white and green” every time I see your name, kay?
My family has 4 Nooks, which means we can share everything we read (plus they can watch Netflix, play Angry Birds, etc. on one of them). That’s a huge benefit, since our tastes overlap and we can even read new books simultaneously. I did however get an iPad recently, and am at the point where I now prefer reading my Nook books on that instead.
We also go to the library a lot, but the convenience of downloading books instantaneously is highly seductive.
I read some books with the Kindle app on the ipad. The dictionary is the killer feature for me, and the Google/Wiki search. I started reading Game of Thrones, after seeing the TV series, and I’ve found it very helpful to be able to select a character name, tap Google, and see their picture.
But I still only use it for Gutenberg stuff, and for a handful of novels I don’t expect to re-read. I have no intention of getting rid of my paper books, and I’ll keep buying nice editions of books I want to keep. I know my kids will be able to read those.
It’s disappointing that publishers haven’t done more to take advantage of ebooks. They still often have uncorrected errors, images and diagrams are poor quality, there’s little in the way of cross-referencing or indexing. And the readers still lack obvious features, like showing the chapter title, and better ways of jumping back and forth to an appendix or map.
I so love my Kindle. I’ve had it for almost 2 years now and I’ve read a handful of dead tree books since then. For fiction books there’s no other way I’d rather read now.
I still think that a non fiction book that needs to be flipped through I don’t think I would like to try on my Kindle, but I haven’t run in to that yet.
I do love the fact that I can get old out of copyright books for free. I’ve read a ton that way. I don’t think I’ve spent a whole lot on books in the last year or so.
The one thing I love about my Kindle is when it’s midnight and I just have to read the second and third books in a trilogy, I can have them immediately. And because I live in the country, I save almost as much in gas money as a paperback costs on my Kindle. Sure, I could wait and buy it the next time I’m in town, but if I was tempted to make the trip just to pick up a book, it’s paid for itself.
There’s of course also the free downloads from Project Gutenberg, Baen Free Library and my local public library. I still check out dead tree books from the library, but if it’s available on e-book it’s just so much easier.
I don’t feel like a traitor, eReaders are better than paper and I’m not ashamed to admit it. It’s been a year and a half and I’m not ever going back. I even bought myself a spare Kindle, in case something happens to mine. I also bought my husband one, I think he might love it more than I do, he’s now reading 10 times more than he used to and he takes it everywhere. This spring I gave my father a Kindle and the next day he boxed up and got rid of every paper books he had in the house (~400).
I go either way. I do a lot of reading on my Kindle, but also a lot of reading of good old-fashioned printed books.
On the one hand, I concur with almost everything everyone’s said about the Kindle (except for the instant gratification thing—I’m more of an “enjoy the anticipation” kind of guy, plus I have such a huge backlog of other books I want to read that I hardly ever feel like I need to buy one particular book right now). There are books that I have specifically bought for my Kindle because the print version was more awkward to read—small print, hard to hold, hard to carry around, or whatever. And there are many books I’ve gotten free or cheap in electronic form that would have been either significantly more expensive or unavailable in print.
On the other hand, I do love the look and feel of a real book. With electronic books, I miss the colorful covers. I miss the feeling of physical progress I get as I turn the pages and make my way through the book. I miss the way books sit on my shelves, tempting me to read them or reminding me of their contents. I miss being able to easily leaf forward and see how many pages are left in this chapter, or flip back to check on something from earlier in the book. Printed books that I don’t want to keep after I’ve finished with them can be given away or sold or traded on paperbackswap.com. And there are lots of books I want to read that are still unavailable in electronic format, or that I can get a lot cheaper (or already have) in printed form.
So, TLDR: I read a lot in both print and e-formats, and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.
