Book v. Nook

[Mythica]

[quote=""Veronica""]I never looked at it that way. Made me a lot more positive about the Kindles (and whatever the other ones are called)
[/quote]

And it's not just people with arthritis - I get hand strain from holding paper books open too long (and I'm only 28!).

They're also very good for people with poor eyesight who need large print books but can't always find them. With ereaders, you can adjust the text size (as well as the font and line spacing with some ereaders) to you liking with any ebook. They're also great space savers, not just for travel but for people like me who share a small 650 sq ft apartment with their spouse.

They're not for everyone but there are a lot of benefits to ebooks.

[Madeleine]

[quote=""Mythica""]And it's not just people with arthritis - I get hand strain from holding paper books open too long (and I'm only 28!).

They're also very good for people with poor eyesight who need large print books but can't always find them. With ereaders, you can adjust the text size (as well as the font and line spacing with some ereaders) to you liking with any ebook. They're also great space savers, not just for travel but for people like me who share a small 650 sq ft apartment with their spouse.

They're not for everyone but there are a lot of benefits to ebooks.[/quote]

So do I, especially if it's a huge doorstep of a book.

[Ludmilla]

[quote=""Mythica""]And it's not just people with arthritis - I get hand strain from holding paper books open too long (and I'm only 28!).

They're also very good for people with poor eyesight who need large print books but can't always find them. With ereaders, you can adjust the text size (as well as the font and line spacing with some ereaders) to you liking with any ebook. They're also great space savers, not just for travel but for people like me who share a small 650 sq ft apartment with their spouse.

They're not for everyone but there are a lot of benefits to ebooks.[/quote]

I'm not ready for large print books yet, but I've definitely gone through the 40-something eye change and the ability to adjust font and spacing is a boon as well as the space-saving advantages (I have no more book shelf room in my home). I'll concede that ebooks may not be as eco-friendly as we might imagine, but I shudder to think about the amount of paper that gets wasted for books that people buy and probably do not read or that stores do not sell (esp when you consider the books that get destroyed to make room for the constant onslaught of new books in the practice of book stripping MMPs).

[Kveto from Prague]

Judging from the amount of e-readers that my fellow commuters have on the tube ride to work, im starting to feel like a real minority with an old fashioned paperback book.

[fljustice]

Just read this fascinating blog from Kristine Kathryn Rusch about how having an ereader has affected her purchasing books (skim the first several paragraphs to get to the meat of the post.) I thought she made a lot of good points.

In full disclosure, I received a Nook for Valentine's Day and have yet to check out the online bookstore. Too much time on the computer for work, I don't like to read for pleasure on a screen. But I have a lot of traveling coming up and I'll be loading up that ereader soon!

[Ludmilla]

I think she's right about this:

The key isn’t price; it’s availability.

Although price is very compelling. I know a lot of people with ereaders that live and die by the special promotions for free and bargain books. I've been reading more indie published fiction by authors I wouldn't have tried, but for books under $5, I'm willing to try them if they are writing about something I'm interested in.

I also use the gift card trick. I received a bonus in the form of a gift card from work at the beginning of the year and I've used that card for all of my ebook purchases so far this year.

[MLE (Emily Cotton)]

My kindle means that I'm much more likely to finish a book -- before I misplace it.

I have my 96-year-old, half-blind mom reading again because I bought her a giant sized kindle and showed her how to turn on the audio reading feature. Which means that we can talk about something besides her aches and pains and other family misdemeanors. Thank you, Amazon!

Jay and I can now share books at the same time, without me having to read it aloud to him.

I haven't even had my kindle a year, and I'm reading and buying a LOT more books.

[Telynor]

To be honest I love having a nook. Being disabled, and not able to always get to a bookstore, having that nook means I can indulge my ever increasing itch to read something new. Not to mention that wonderful ability to change the font size, the built in dictionary function (not the greatest, but hey still useful), and the storage. On the other hand, graphics, tables, maps and photographs are not the best, so I use the nook to read novels most of the time, or a newspaper article.

[ejays17]

Availablity is a big problem for me & SLOC. YThere's a lot of stuff published that we could order from OS as a paper-book, but can't get as an eBook cos the "whatevers" haven't been cleared for here. (By "whatevers" I mean the rights or other associated matters). Case in point: both of us want to re-read the George RR Martin Song of Ice & Fire series as he's finally finished the next book (happy dance ), but they're great big heavy things that are hard to read in bed. We managed to get Books 2-4 as eBooks, but 1 hasn't been released here. Which just doesn't make sense! And then we've got to keep our fingers crossed that 5 will be released as an eBook here at the same time as the paper-book, or we'll end up buying two copies, and then giving the less-obviously-read book to my sister for Christmas...

But apart from those issues, both of us just love our eRaeders, so much so that one of my workmates was surprised to see i'd gone "old-fashioned" at lucnh the other day as i had a paper-book ('twas the first book of GRRM's series)

[fljustice]

Okay, it took me over a year to finally load up my Nook and take it on a trip and...I'm hooked. My only complaint was that I had to turn it off during takeoff and landing, so was reduced to reading the inflight magazine and looking out the window. Along with lightening my load, I found I read faster. Probably something to do with a smaller screen, so I could take in whole paragraphs rather than reading each word on a larger format. I'll still be reading paper, but did enjoy my ereader experience.