I've recently been kinda-sorta considering buying an e-reader. A Kindle, a Nook... I hadn't really gotten that far. (Other than to know that I certainly did not want an iPad -- with its backlit screen -- for the purpose.) But I couldn't really figure out if I really thought it would be useful to have one, or if it was pure gadget lust.
As I was considering pros and cons and coming up neutral, a friend of mine offered to loan me a Nook for a few days so I could try it out. Ah! Clarity! Nothing like a test drive to figure out whether it would be worth it! But the problem is, the experience with the actual thing highlighted both all the pros and all the cons I had imagined about the experience.
On the pro side, it was indeed damn cool to have an entire library of books there in one place. You could take it anywhere and read "anything" (available in e-book format, at least) right there. If you don't already have a certain book, you can buy it and start reading in about a minute. Plus, no shortage of bookshelf space in your home, no lifting boxes and boxes of heavy books next time you move.
I thought I'd miss the tactile sense of holding and reading a book, but I honestly didn't all that much. It was nice being able to read with one hand comfortably, without breaking the spine of a book. (That drives me nuts.) I'm sure that if I had an e-reader, there are still some books I'd want to buy in traditional form -- from favorite authors, for example -- but e-books seemed promising.
But, on the negative side... well, the technology just isn't quite "there" yet. Some of the formatting of e-books with footnotes looked incredibly goofy. The "page turn" buttons respond slowly, and trigger a quick full-screen black flash to render the next page of text. It makes for a less-than-smooth read, and sometimes I found myself actually waiting for a new page to appear. For a fraction of a second, sure, but still noticable in mid-sentence.
So I find myself no more decided about an e-reader purchase than I was before. In fact, flying out to Indianapolis only served to further stress the good and bad qualities of an e-reader. I took a crazy-fat 800 page book with me on this trip. In hardcover. It's two inches thick and then some, easily the fattest thing in my laptop carrying case. Sure, I could have picked a slimmer book, but that's exactly the point. With an e-reader, I wouldn't have had to make the choice, and it wouldn't have been such a pain in the butt to take.
On the other hand, "please turn off all portable electronic devices" during takeoff and landing. A real book? Just read it. But an e-reader can't actually entertain you during 30 key minutes (or more) of a plane flight.
Anyone out there have an e-reader and want to sing its praises?
4 comments:
What's the back-breaking book you're reading?
FKL
I've really enjoyed BeamItDown, an app for the iPhone, which has a very nice scrolling feature (no "page turn" delays), but their selection of books is very limited.
I'm reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.
I think that a limited selection would pretty much kill the main appeal of e-books for me. No perfect solution yet, I suppose.
I've only borrowed a friend's iPad for eBook reading. I really liked it for what I read on it (some magazines and a short book). The issue is that since it isn't a dedicated reader, the interface was different for reading the magazines vs. the book. I think if I were getting a dedicated reader, I'd get a Kindle (I read the book through the iPad's Kindle app), but I'd have to try out the Kindle device before I did.
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