For this week’s Book Series Wednesday I’m covering a topic that I though I should cover at least once. It’s all about those nifty, or not so nifty to you, E-readers!
What is an E-reader?: In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last 7 years or so, an E-reader is a device that holds lots of books that have been digitized into a slim package. The two main competitors at the moment are Apple with their iPads and Amazon with their Kindles, there are other companies that sell tablets, but if you are talking purely about e-books then those are the two front runners.
What I think about them: For the longest time I scoffed at the notion, thinking it was sort of a fad. However after really taking a look at all the benefits of an e-reader I realized that the benefits outweigh the cons quite a bit. Let’s get the cons out of the way first. There is no paper moving through your hands, and that can never be recreated with our current e-reader technology; although I look at sci-fi series like Sword Art Online and drool at the prospect of virtual libraries I could visit to just read quietly in and still feel the paper under my hand. That weight of a heavy book in your bag, or whatever you are using to carry them, even if it’s just your arms. I enjoyed carrying a book to read at school in my free time, which I had a lot of in earlier years because once you are done eating lunch and it was raining outside you could go to the library or sit and look at the school yard under the concrete porch.
The Benefits: First off their is the environmental benefit of saving tons of paper each year by not making as many printed books and selling them instead as e-books. The other big one is the fact that it is often cheaper to buy an e-book than a paperback edition, and definitely cheaper than a hardcover edition. The other benefit is the fact that you can carry so many books in a such small format. If I wanted to read the 500+ Light Novels i’ve got on my iPad in a paper format I’d have to push around a pallet loader to carry them all.
Final Thoughts: I miss the feeling of paper under fingers using an e-reader, but I love that I can carry around so many books all in one place with barely any weight. Would I buy everything I could in paper format if money was no issue? Absolutely, as I prefer reading a book over reading it on an iPad or Kindle, but I love listening to them even more.
That’s it for this week’s Book Series Wednesday!