My wife has an iPad, I do not. She regularly uses it for web-browsing, email, games, and books; and finds it quite suitable for all of the above. However, she'll also read books on paper--and prefers hardback for that, even. (She did add a folding leather case to the iPad, though--it really does need more grippiness, not to mention screen protection when not in use.)

Me, I'm a bit of a cheapskate--I'd just as soon buy a paperback because it's cheaper than a hardback (and more portable), and not get an iPad because it costs too much. (Maybe someday.) Additionally, I regularly travel to secure/government sites, where phones/laptops/USB drives/iPads are forbidden, but paper books are just fine. Thus, I tuck one away in my tool bag, and pull it out in downtime or when I'm waiting for a process to finish.

Further, I'd far rather acquire more bookcases than decrease my book count, well beyond what's reasonable.

Oh, and as for iPads vs. e-ink readers: iPads (and any other LCD screesn) are hard to read outdoors; e-ink readers are as legible as printed paper.

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You make a good point about the epaper -- the iPad is a pita in bright sunlight. though it's a blessing at midnight on the back porch.

Something that needs to change is a $19.00 hardback book selling for $21 in electronic format or $.01 as a used paperback. I suspect there's a DRM issue in there somewhere. I see many writers on Twitter lamenting the popularity of their eBooks on torrent sites. In this case I think it's the fuel for the fire too. High ebook prices make people more likely to steal them while low book prices make me hoard books I never finish.

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I think I've pretty much shied away from the digital book, in part because of finances, but mostly because I'm someone who tends to annotate things in the margins as well as underline. The reason being that I think with books, and often enough, when I revisit them, I want to know what I last thought about the matter and to not have to read the book over again to find that out.

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Ah, but the annotation and highlighting are some of what I like BEST about eBooks. I can highlight with a finger, add notes with a tap, then I can, if I feel like it, email my annotations. Or search through your entire library for that time you wrote "don't forget this passage". And never again will you have to say "sorry, I can't loan you that book, it's got my notes in it."

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If I traveled a lot, I could see the value of an iPad or Kindle or whatever. But I don't so I'm resisting them.

I love books. I collect first editions of favorite authors.

And there's something magical about scoping books out, whether it's in a bookstore or online. The smell of them, the joy of opening a new book and leafing through it... The digital age is taking all the charm away from that.

Edited at 2011-05-01 06:36 pm (UTC)

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There's a magic that's going to be lost in coming across a box of books at a yard sale, or better yet, one of your own books in a box at a yard sale. And letters pressed between the pages -- lots of things will be getting rarer.

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I agree most heartily with everything you say here, but I would only add one other point. It's hard to sum up with ways that make people say, "Oh, but e-books do that." It's connectedness to other people.

Okay, true, if I find an amazing line in a book, I can not only see how many other people highlighted it (connecting me to a community of highlighters), but I can tweet or share it on Facebook. Does the number of highlighters give that line cachet? maybe.

Here's what I miss: "I liked this book and I thought you would too, HERE." and handing off a dog-eared paperback or a cracked-spine hardback.

I miss having someone hand me a book they loved and noticing how the book naturally falls open on page 76 or something because that's the page the person read and re-read and re-read again. I miss seeing their blurry pencilled hieroglyphics on the margins. I miss other people's coffee stains. I miss the pages thickened and warped from when it was dropped in the bathtub.

I miss reading in the bathtub, but that's another topic.

I miss having the opportunity to connect with someone I don't know very well via a book. "have you read this? you really should, here," in the hopes that they'll read it and return it and then we'll have something to chat about when we're getting to know each other.

I worry about not having the opportunity to return a book to someone. I worry about someone not talking the opportunity to return a book to me.

I worry about missing the possibility of walking into someone's house and having their shelves tell me a story about what they like to think about.

I worry about the loss of shared privacy. When I was in sixth grade, the seventh and eighth grade girls were passing around a copy of Forever, by Judy Blume. No one talked about the book's story- it was a closely guarded secret- or how they felt about it, but the book was passed from person to person, with a measure of trust and expectations of silence.
(I remember one girl saying that now that she had read Forever, she wanted to read Wifey.)
I worry about the loss of sharing a private, richly imagined experience that a book offers, by hand, face to face.

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"I worry about missing the possibility of walking into someone's house and having their shelves tell me a story about what they like to think about."

and likewise being able to make instant and harsh judgements about people on the train based on what book they're holding.....

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I really, really want to find a digital book device that I will love. I haven't yet. (To be fair I haven't messed with an iPad and maybe that is closer to fine, though I hate iTunes a lot.) I've held some of the various ereaders and they are just too small for me. I know that seems silly considering I read books of all sizes but the edge, plus the screen and it just ends up not really being very satisfactory.

I want one, because then I can take multitudes of books everywhere without filling up a suitcase. But I also love the tactile things about books, the feel of paper and the look of covers, the type. I love buying used books and finding a surprise inscription or a mysterious bookmark. I love looking at the color of the paper, the wrinkled edges, dog eared pages.

(I also love reading while floating in the pool or soaking in the tub, and while it is sometimes tragic to drop a book in the water, dropping an ipad would worse.)

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I imagine there might be a luxury eBook market some day, where you'll pay a premium price for a customized exterior and it'll be your book forever or for years anyway, but with the rate at which technology is changing, it doesn't seem like i'll be any time in the near future.

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I think I'm just old fashioned. I've always loved the tactile feel of a book, the heft in my hands and the texture of the pages. My sister let me look at her kindle, and the screen is just fine to read in daylight, no real glare or anything, and given the fact that I rarely reread certain books (comic books, craft books, and old text books being the exception), it probably would be more cost-effective (and save space!) for me to have books in one place rather than amassing large amounts of them like I have. Still, it's just as much a visual thing to me, part of my personal landscape to have piles of books around. It reminds me of where I've been, and I like looking at bookshelves with assorted spines in them even when I'm not reading.

I know technology is advancing, and I don't fault it. If it didn't, we'd all still be living in caves and there would be no books at all, though bongos would probably be more popular. If there are new mediums that allow and encourage more people to read a bigger variety of books, then I am generally for them, but personally, I will keep buying books and carting them around with me/leaving them laying all over the place. Then again, I am also one of those people who still buys CDs and doesn't have an ipod, for what that's worth.

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There is also some joyful convenience of thinking "not only do I have all the books I need with me, but I have all the music I own as well."

I suspect paper & e books will work out their own niches -- I imagine that being a college student I'd rather have all my books with me all the time on my iPad than having them scattered about, but I think I'd still rather have that old beat up copy of The Great Gatsby in my back pocket....

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You certainly DID acquire your iPad fairly. Winning is totally fair, and wonderful, too.

My problems with eBook readers have a lot to do with that computer/iTunes requirement. Somewhere in the eUniverse, the entire contents of that reader are known and cataloged. If there is some conflict with a publisher or international rights or merely some kind of corporate argument about rights and money having nothing to do with the person who has the device, whole swaths of your library can be summarily erased, just like that, never to return. If you cancel your eSubscription a magazine, all your back issues disappear, even though you have paid for them! Your information can and will be used for marketing purposes, already appearing on the "cheaper", advert-included version of the Kindle. And of course, these things are all so very expensive! If I wanted one, which I don't, well, too bad, it's forever out of reach.

I do like the idea of their portability, and the way many books can be carried in such a small space. But I think that there will never be room for books like The Students' Series of English Classics, A Ballad Book in there, and art books? Forget about it! The format is way too small, even though poor, helpless comics are being squeezed down into that format every day.

My friend John, who is a movie and TV propmaster, has an iPad case similar to yours. In his case, it's an old battered copy of a Time/Life Science Library book from the 1960's. It's not only convenient, but he figures that it's so obsolete that if he left it in his car and someone stole the car, they'd throw the book out before they drove away. The irony of using a modified book to hold the thing was not lost on him, either.

P.S. Did you ever get that 'zine I sent you? I mailed it to the PO Box on the Veronique envelope. I'm wondering what you thought of it.

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All the problems e-Reader are supposed to solve are not problems I have. The closest to a real problem is the "toting books when you travel" problem, but since I'm fortunate enough to be able bodied, when I flew to Australia I simply filled a duffle with 10-12 books. Three weeks later I flew back with 16 books.

That said, I know that it's very helpful for more frequent travelers, and with the various magnification tools it's probably easier than finding large print editions. They've got a purpose, but none of those purposes matter for me.

Of course, I'm 33-year-old without a cell phone or TV, so I may not be representative of the populace at large :-)

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having a book that you can also watch tv on is a pretty nifty thing.

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since i got ill i have not liked reading so much, since i have a lot of head pain and pain in my eyes. and, because i have a lot of 'down time' (what with being ill) my workaround has been audio books. now, these are punitively expensive or free but very random, so i have ended up hearing mainly books i would not have chosen to read, and i can't say i am any the worse for it.

there are a lot of books about vampires doing the rounds. but a person has to have some limits.

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You can use Voiceover in the accessibility options to have your iPad read to you. i'm not sure if there are many voice options.

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a slightly different perspective -

I design & typeset publications. Currently I have several older clients who utterly don't get that non-mainstream paper publishing is dead. No North American publisher is ever again going to publish a paper book that *might* not sell, much less one that they know perfectly well isn't going to sell - like one client's lifetime retrospective of his poetry, a book that ten years ago would have been snapped up by a literary publishing house. Yet older writers are sill attached to the idea of a physical book; many of them won't even consider e-publishing. And that effectively means their manuscripts are dead. They will not survive in *any* form. That means the mature work of an entire generation is going to be pretty sparse, in the historical record.

And the ones that have enough money to vanity publish? don't understand that their paper books will sit on a shelf somewhere until someone recycles them. Because they are too expensive to ship, to inconvenient to store and handle, and just basically cost too much effort and money when there are bazillions of e-publications competing for the same resources of time and attention. If they are lucky, someone will take the time to digitise the book before recycling it, but that's about the only chance of it surviving.

And ... how are we going to preserve e-books? Archivists and librarians are still a bit stymied by this question.

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When it comes down to it, archivists have yet to find a replacement (as far as longevity and durability) for well taken care of acid free paper.

Electronic sounds great. But machines die, files get lost, corrupted, are un-openable. Players of these magical formats fall into disuse, cease to exist or barely exist at all. Archiving video footage now requires a large room full of linked up various types of film and digital players.

Paper sits in its pretty boxes on the pretty shelves and rocks out for ages.

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I bought The Spousal Unit an iPad, and it's been miraculous for his reading, because he only has the use of one hand since the stroke. The iPad allows him to read, and turn pages, and do other things like drink, or eat. (A mass-market paperback is hellish to read when you have only one hand to hold it open and turn pages.)

I'm a book reader, and love the feel of a book in my hand, or in my lap, and I resonate with the reading books because they're there. I have memories of being at at family reunion when I was about fourteen, and sitting in my aunt's attic, reading Peyton Place, because it was there, and I'd heard the name. I think between eight and fourteen, I read a lot of books -- Harold Robbins novels, bodice-rippers, mysteries -- that were on people's shelves/in the basement/in boxes, and it was a miraculous time.

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I've also found that while carrying armloads of stuff (like Roswell) and reading that it's very easy to turn the page with your nose.

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To be quite honest, I despise the idea of ebooks. I want to be a writer, I want to publish works of fiction, I want to be able to sign someone's copy of the book I hope to one day publish. It's very hard to sign a kindle, I'm sure. Same with the ipad and nook and what have you.

And it's not just that. Technology is advancing at an insane rate, everything we do now is centered around a screen, to the point where I'm afraid that our lives are going to be confined to it somehow. I know I need my computer to write, I love my computer and my internet and my OpenOffice and my spell check. But when do we say 'enough'?

I am all for saving trees but all I'm seeing in the future is empty buildings that were once libraries and bookstores going out of busniess. I'm seeing a world detached from a life outside of a screen.

Imagine if the "Neverending Story" was about a kid who ditched school to read his kindle? Where's the magic in that? If you look at it that way, if you try to imagine little Bastian sitting in that cold, dark attic by candle light reading his kindle and going into a world of imagination...

Remember that reeaaallly powerful scene where he throws the book in his frustration? They'd have to cut that out for fear of breaking the screen. Also, better make sure that Kindle doesn't run out of battery while he's off having high soaring adventures.

The idea makes me feel bitter, and it makes me feel like a hypocrite. Long have I wanted a type writer, and now I learn the last factory that makes them is closed down. What a disturbing world we live in, where everything we do is confined to a screen.

I refuse to ever get a kindle. Or an ipad, or a nook, or anything else that tries to destroy the beauty that is a hardcover, or a paperback novel.

~Jenn

P.S. Now I have that damn movie in my head. XD Crap. And the second I thought that I wondered if I could download it instead of watching my DVD or trying to hunt for my old VHS of it...God dammit.

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You can still get a typewriter. I got one fancifully a few years back thinking that I'd do my correspondence on it and was rather quickly reminded why I'd stopped.

There is, as far as I can tell, no romance to reading a book on an electronic device. The neverending story couldn't be written with one, you're very right. And I also wonder about the dangers of writers putting them into books now "Bob picked up his iPad and went to the car" may be so dated in 15 years as to kill a story, though I suppose it may be as romantic in a hundred as reading about someone lighting a gas lamp.

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This is an issue I've been trying to intellectually sort for the past few months. I've owned a Kindle for two years now and I'm also a bibliophile, a tactile person, a visual learner and a tree hugger....so it's extremely complicated. My main impetus for getting the kindle is, actually, the 10,000+ books that line every wall of my house. It's overwhelming! And as I declutter the cases from time to time it's apparent that I do read some disposable prose....enter the Kindle - I thought "perfect!" now I can just delete into the ether....however, what I have discovered is that I just don't read as much pulpy trash as I thought I did. And the actuality is that there are some books I just fetishistic-ally want in book form. I've also found that without the visual "reminder" of the book itself, I forget what I've read - I've actually bought several books twice in the past two kindled years!!!! However, the iPad does offer some recompense to these issues - visual electronic bookshelves! and a device which isn't single-minded. There are certainly wonderful pluses to the Kindle - power outages are frequent here and many a Winter night I passed last season tucked up in bed with the Kindle and a booklight! Also, for being on-the-go it's pretty much indispensable. And for reading smut in public. And for keeping fanfics that are near and dear to my heart. So I do find a use for it....but am still very much in love with the actual bookform of reading.

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I've got maybe 200 photography books that I really rarely open, but occasionally I want to be able to say "Oh, let me show you X". I really would like to have some of them on my iPad and off the shelves, but there are others I want to keep on the shelves. And, hey, I don't really need any of the physical copies I have of Clive Cussler novels. This could be liberating, if it wouldn't be so expensive to re-buy all these books you've bought already on the off-chance you may want to open them again....

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When I was moving from Philadelphia to the DC area, some friends decided to help me pack my books and also to bring boxes so I didn't have to buy a size of Staples boxes I knew worked for me. So I had over 20 boxes of books packed that I couldn't pick up without help. When I moved from the DC area to Nicaragua, I knew that I wasn't going to bring down all the books, so spent about two weeks hauling most of them to the Salvation Army and a commune I'd spent three weeks visiting a couple of months earlier. Three boxes and some miscellaneous books made the trip -- 29 pounds of books by US mail (in one of those Staples boxes I could left) and two other boxes with a Medrano Express sea shipment. Had one bookcase made for these, and then decided that I really should get a Kindle since most of my pre-1927 books were gone (kept some Keats and W. B. Yeats.

The Kindle can come to bed with me, can be read anywhere I could read a paperback, and has some tools and texts on it now for learning Spanish. I don't have to move more library than I can lift. I don't have to pay triple prices for US magazine subscriptions. The only thing I've tried to subscribe to that's not available through Amazon in my region is The New Yorker -- but I can subscribe the New York Review of Books and buy the latest Gioconda Belli novel.

I miss being able to look at my bookshelf and casually pick up something I'd forgotten I had. With the Kindle, either I have to scroll down everything I've got loaded or I have to look in all the collections, not quite so casual as lifting my eyes from what I'm doing and glancing at the bookcase and either getting the book out or glancing back to whatever I was doing. Hard also to keep two books open at the same time unless you have two Kindles, or something else with a Kindle app.

And it's a bit unnerving to realize that the newer books in my library are tied to a company that may or may not outlast most of the companies I've worked for.

Bit annoying to have the Kindle try to hook up with my social network and have a way to do email (through the browser).

My Kindle makes growing an English language library here painless. I don't have to go to Managua or Grenada to buy English language books, or even many current Spanish language books.

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you may be able to get a separate program (calibre does this, i assume others as well) to parse through online content and mail you a daily collection of articles -- perhaps the new yorker's stuff is behind a paywall that won't allow that though..

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i recently went on a trip with my mother and seeing that she had a kindle but was not using it, asked her to bring it so that i could futz with it. on the subway in DC, i thought "this is pretty cool, i have like 10 books and it weighs less than anything else in my bag". a week later, on the flight home, i had my old man moment where i realized i was on a flying tube, holding a plastic star trek box with more books than i could read by year's end. then i had some wine and fell asleep.

In the end, i wound up buying a nook color for myself -- the page turning mechanism is more to my liking, the color screen for kid's books and the ability to use it as a simple tablet should i really want to sold me on it. I use calibre to organise my digital library. I am actively seeking out digital copies of my physical books and will be trying to give most of them away, barring a few personal favorites or those with emotional significance.

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I am actively seeking out digital copies of my physical books and will be trying to give most of them away, barring a few personal favorites or those with emotional significance.

This. I own hundreds and hundreds of books, and I've moved them cross-country once. The second time, I was moving from a large house with a purpose-specific library in to a single small bedroom, and there was no possibility of bringing them all, so I had to decide which tiny percentage made the cut. Even those few dozen were by far the heaviest, bulkiest part of my moving procedure, and even a year later I get frustrated at the realization that I failed to predict that I'd want Book X again when I was moving here.

Now, with my Nook, I'll never be faced with that again. All my books can go wherever I go with ease. Moving again holds no horrors!

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As someone who has to read upwards of 2000 pages a week (often in the form of very heavy, very clunky books that are hard to read in bed or even in a comfortable chair), the Ipad/kindle idea sounds nice.

But I love the tactility of books. I love turning the pages, the weight, getting to underline, cross out, yell at the historians/authors with my pen in the margins. My particular favorite is taking notes with a LePen on that that good thickly toothed paper academic publishers use. Since this experience is so integral to my work and life, I just don't think I could give it up.

I did always love books or reading, but I have always loved libraries. I love how libraries sound and oddly enough--smell. I grew up in university libraries and the books give them this particular smell. Since I essentially have the same income as a prisoner, I get my books from a variety of university libraries. Going there and library diving is really fun. I would lose some of my best leisure time with a kindle.

I really like regular books.

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Plus, it's really hard to look all serious historian without the wall to wall library and piles of books on the floor.

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My iPad doesn't replace physical books, it enhances them. Some books I want to read and keep for re-reading, and those are the ones I want physical copies of. Some books, like mystery series, I want to read as soon as they come out but will never re-read, so I buy the e-book version. Also, I read advance copies of a lot of my friends' books, and those are easiest on the iPad, too, because otherwise I'm stuck with desktop or huge stack of printout.

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Oh, and one drawback to reading a book on the iPad while on the plane: you have to turn off your book for takeoff and landing.

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you cant, or i suppose shouldnt, take an ipad into the bathtub. with a towel under your neck, your hair in a top knot and the water piping hot. that is how i have read many a book and im not taking an electronic in there with me. if the book falls in or get splashed, you let it sit a day or two and its dry and crinkly but perfectly fine.

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on the other hand, the search function rules for research and i love the free amazon and google books available. ive been reading them on my iphone which prob isnt great for my eyes, but i do enjoy.

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What an absolutely wonderful entry, and responses to your writing.
Nice to read a substantial entry.

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thank you for taking the time to respond.

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I find increasing appeal in the idea of a tablet, though my unwillingness to be chained to Steve Jobs' One True Way means that it'll be an Android model.
For the moment, though, my phone does an excellent job - it helps that I rarely read fiction these days, and mostly stick to either technical references or the likes of The moment it clicks.

As for reading in one's youth, I did an awful lot of that. It helped that my critical faculties bloomed late indeed, so I read all sorts of things that would now have me turning my nose up in disdain. Re-reading The fellowship of the Ring before watching the movie was a salient experience in this respect: as a child, I merely inhaled the entire series and went back for the Hobbit; as an adult, I concluded that what Tolkien desperately needed was a good editor, and quickly learned to start flipping pages when the group reached yet another river and the elves started singing again.

I'm glad I did read all sorts of things back then, though, because it left me with a fairly broad perspective as my tastes started to develop. I say "started" because they haven't really stopped - in fact, their development is picking up again as I discover electro-swing and veer into the Deco era.

But then, I was also the kind of teenager who'd diligently listen to the B-side of every 45 I bought (remember singles?). Somebody had gone to the trouble of writing, producing and recording it; I could at least give it one listen. Amid the inevitable onslaught of token-effort dross, there were gems to be found occasionally; again, worthwhile, even if my efforts are far more directed these days.

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Wow, I'm learning all sorts of things about the way other people read. Somewhere I got the idea that writing on one's book was to be frowned upon. Even though I did highlight and make notes in my text books, this is not something I've ever done with any of my fiction books.

Although I will use the Post-it tabs to note sections as I have a friend that holds a "Passage Party" every year in which he invites many friends to come and read a strictly-timed 10 minute passage from a book that they wanted to share that year. (There is an hour dinner break, though.) So, I do this to mark passages that I may want to read. Everyone gets at least one chance to read a passage and many get two chances. I can't recall anyone reading from an e-book reader in recent years, though.

I tend to think that the percentage of people who have the disposable income to buy an e-book reader and buy books for it is small compared to the potential readership out there and that we will have print books for a long time. Otherwise, this country is most likely in trouble.

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Ebooks cost essentially nothing to distribute. At the moment, the pricing is artificially high, scaled to support a physical distribution network that's no longer necessary. So, in the long run, I think the prices will stabilize as lower than paper books, and nothing will ever go out of print, and books will be very easy to find.

And of course there are tens of thousands of free ebooks available, both some of the very best and most recent (individual authors and Baen books) and lots of older public domain works (Project Gutenberg and others).

Most people have a cell phone anyway, that's what I read on. The last thing I need is another specialized electronic gadget!

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One summer in college I read the books that had been excerpted in "I Know What the Red Clay Looks Like" and from reading lists two friends gave me. It was a rich summer.

There was another summer where I'd go to the library and pick out one book from the "classics" section (one's Everybody read in high school but I somehow didn't), one book from an author I knew I liked, and one totally random book off the shelves. Another great reading summer. I discovered new authors who happened to share cover artists with authors I already liked. And I had my first experience with setting aside a book because it was Just That Bad. "Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming" lost me when the protagonist - who supposedly can pass through dirt and rock - gets stuck in an underground cave. It was the last straw of many.

I think what I miss about the increased digitization of books is going to someone new's house and seeing what's on their bookshelves. It told you about them, about their history, about potentially shared interests.

Come to think of it, I miss the shared experience of being in a group of friends who have all enjoyed the same book or author - that happy banter around characters and plot lines and cover art that doesn't match what's inside.

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Why do you miss talking about books in a group of friends? Just sounds like you're hanging out with the wrong friends! I certainly talk about books with people all the time.

I certainly snoop bookshelves when I visit. In photos, too. On the other hand, some people keep their booklists online, and I can snoop those without even having to go over. I publish notes about the books I read online, so people can check me out easily.

Transitions will happen, there will be down-sides to the new technology; I do agree. I see it, on balance, as a huge win for everybody. In the long run, when things have steadied down, and if we don't fuck it up.

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When my husband suggested that one of our Christmas purchases for ourselves last year should be a Kindle, I wasn't sold on the idea. I read more than him, but I figured if we were going to get an electronic device to read books it should be an iPad, so we could read books & check email & play games & tweet, etc. But he hated the idea of reading on an LCD screen and an iPad was out of our budget. So we looked into the Kindle, and also the Nook. We ended up buying a Nook. (The e-ink version, not the Nook Color.)
One of the factors in that decision was Best Buy selling the $150 version for $99 on Black Friday. The other factor was that you can read library e-books on the Nook, but not the Kindle.

For as long as I can remember, basically since learning to read in Kindergarten, I've turned on a bedside lamp and read every single night before sleeping. OK, not every night, but out of my 35 years as a reader I probably have at least 34 years of nightly reading in. We never went more than two weeks without a trip to the library when I was a kid, and when I ran out of books before we made it back I'd start in on the bookshelves in the house. I can't read a Reader's Digest Condensed Book now, because it just feels like something is missing, but as a kid who was reading books that were probably too old for me, the RDCB were just right.

In the last few years I still read, but the quantity of books dropped. I'd be online until I was tired and then just read a dozen pages or so of my book before falling asleep. I couldn't imagine not reading, but I wasn't reading like I used to.

Then we got the Nook...

I've already read almost 50 books this year in just 4 months. My local library has almost 10,000 different titles available and I've got over 700 of those tagged in my wish list. It's not just the portability that has me reading more, it's the instant acquisition. When a books ends on a cliffhanger I can get the next one in the series immediately. And because I have to request and wait for the more popular books, I also get the fun of random emails telling me that a book I really want to read is ready for me!

I'll still buy physical copies of the authors I love and of people I know who get published, but it's nice to read "fluff" with no financial commitment. How awesome would it be if book publishers would do like some of the movie studios, and when you buy the physical copy you also get a free digital copy? My friend Scott Sigler is doing that with his next book and I'm so thrilled to be getting the beautiful limited edition hardcover, but getting to read it on my Nook!

Hubby & I will be going on a week long vacation in Florida later this month, and we've got 2 days in the minivan with my sister, brother-in-law, and two 7 yr olds down to FL and 2 days coming back. My Nook will probably save my sanity!

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As someone who is on the waiting list to receive a new perfume made to smell like old books I can't imagine giving that up. Part of the pleasure of reading for me is the feel of the paper, hearing the pages rustle, the smell and if I didn't have books I have no idea what my cats would chew up instead of the tops and bottoms of all my book bindings.

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If obsessive book readers are "bookaholics", then (a bunch of us decided decades back) that smell must be the distinctive odor of...bookahol!

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Kindle Vs IPad Vs Dead Tree Books (DTB) has been an ongoing discussions on many a forum.

I do love my DTBs, and have grand wishes to have a library within my home - therefore any home we intend to purchase in the future needs to be No. of People + office + library, which often leads to a minimum of 3 rooms.

That said, I guess you can tell, we don't own our own home yet. Housing prices and mortgages are just going up, every time we saved just enough, suddenly another 10k is heaped on to us for the intended housing we want. I have got books stuck in Singapore because dad won't let me bring my whole life's worth of books with me. I have accumulated enough here that bookshelves were just simply not enough anymore (I blame Neil Gaiman for part of that problem).

Which leads me to Kindle. I bought the Kindle when the IPad was just a rumour. I love my Kindle, and while I adore my IPad too, it is not an item I had use to read due to the brilliant display (not good in the dark) and just something about it that make the motion sickness on buses even worse.

The Kindle, on the other hand, fits into smaller hand bags too, is focused for one purpose and is good at it. I love the e-ink technology - who cares about the lack of games or colours.

It is true though, on IPad, there are special readers that allows highlighting and notes functions on the side - but I have never liked desecrating my books and I am quite comfortable with leaving them clean as they come (of course, then I don't have the yellowing of the books either!). the only thing I might miss, is when I see David Edding's Regina's Song. Fonts isn't a big deal if the editors format it properly. the unique thing about Regina's Song though was not the typeset...

The pages were deliberately left raw like it's badly cut so as to represent a frazzling of the mind. It was an excellent thing to feel and discover and thought about.

It is also a rare enough occurrence. :)

and there, I think I have rambled on enough :)

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(can't find edit button!)

addendum: What I was trying to say in the first few paragraphs was, I have ran out of space, and it's not easy to heave that much books between continents and between houses. I compensate with my kindle.

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