Posted by I have done it.
I bit the bullet, I dealt with the Devil, etcetera, etcetera.
I went onto the interwebs and bought myself an e-reader.
Blasphemous, I know.
Me. Annew. The dusty bookworm who always campaigned for the joys of ‘authentic physical reading’, sold out. ‘Joined the digital age’.
Some people will shrug and not care. Some will be appalled. Some might applaud my adventurous nature.
I, for one, already felt triumphant when I settled down in bed to read and didn’t get arm-cramps after five minutes.
To be fair, there are multiple reasons to buy an e-reader. Though arm-cramps is a good one, as far as I’m concerned. Funnily enough, most people I asked about their experience with e-readers told me what I didn’t expect. They said that they still preferred reading physical, paper books. It’s still more comfortable ánd feels more authentic. Despite their use and like of the ‘despised’ e-reader, these people all still love books.
It’s logical, if you think about it. I mean, e-readers cost money too. Only ‘real readers’ who actually read more than a few books each year would be willing to make such an investment. So along that train of thought, the people who commit themselves to e-readers are a devoted group of readers, who are incorrectly spurned for their abandonment of ‘the tome’.
Yeah, doesn’t sound great when I put it like that, eh?
The pro’s are known
It is mostly ease that makes people ‘go digital’. The fact that you can carry your whole library with you without any strain, you can read multiple books without losing sight of where you left off (a very familiar problem for me) and you can adapt the size of the lettering; all great reasons to switch to an e-reader.
The environmental argument is also a valid one. Especially for people who read and buy a lot (hum) it could be a good choice for the environment to go digital. Though the production cost of the e-reader itself does need to be taken into account in order to make a fair comparison to the printed text.
My main reason to buy one was the discovery that I already owned quite a few digital files of books. People sent them to me, or I bought them on a whim, thinking: Yes, I will read this entire pdf file someday.
But my eyes. They just can’t take it.
Reading on a computerscreen, or tablet for that matter, is not comfortable. And I refuse to actually print these files out, though I do want to read them… So this is the logical choice! What an adventure.
It’s a new age, baby
This will probably (hopefully) save me a lot of money and space in the end. I developed the habit of buying every book I encountered and wanted to read someday, which led to a whole lot of backlog. And little walking space… Similarly to what happened with my first Goodreads experience, standing in front of my piles of books sometimes gave me the feeling that I was behind on my homework.
Choosing which book to read next should be exciting, not daunting. And it should not be strategized, either. Hopefully this little device will help me me to organize my reading a bit better, and help me get back into reading comfortably more easily. Especially on the go.
Of course, adorned with a protective cover of Vincent van Gogh’s most marketable work.
I will still read a lot of physical books too, since I still have a lot of those around. I will also still buy new physical books, but I intend to limit that to more special ones: pretty covers and favorite novels.
I’m excited! There are many books I intend to read on my new device, and I’ll keep you up to date on my experiences with it.
I’m off to check project Gutenberg, a great website on which ebooks of classics whose copyright has expired can be downloaded for free. A lot of great content on there, and it’s a nice way to get inspired.
Source!
What's Annew 