Sunday salon - e-books vs 'real' books

Happy Easter everyone! I thought I would honour the long weekend (several days late, as it happens - sorry about that!) with an appropriately significant discussion: the Big One, or at least a part of it. I have been thinking about this topic for a long time, but was initially reluctant to visit it here because I have so many complicated feelings about e-books and I know that these emotions will likely get in the way of any objectivity I might lend to the topic. There are a lot of different discussions to be had about e-reading but here I want to talk about preferences - whether I prefer, and whether you prefer, reading electronically or on paper.

Here's the thing: I get mad when people tell me print books are dying. It upsets me because the physical books that I own are probably my most treasured material possessions (after family photographs). I have been collecting books since I can remember. I still own the books I read as a child, my Enid Blytons and Joan Aikens and Judy Blumes, and I can't wait to share these with my own children. The thought of sitting Iggy in my lap and reading to him from my old edition of The Magic Faraway Tree fills my heart with joy. My brother still owns the treasured hardback copies of The Hardy Boys series that my father kept from his own childhood, and which my brother and I both tore through voraciously when we were young. Bibliohubby knows that if he wants to get me a special gift, hunting down a signed first edition of one of my favourite books is guaranteed to bring a giddy smile to my face. When I was at University, my room had piles of books teetering in every corner of the room, and I returned from every bookshop sale laden with yet more brown bags of books. Numerous men over the years have loudly complained whilst helping me move about the sheer number of boxes filled with brick-like tomes that they were required to carefully shift from one apartment to another. And as you all know, one of the things I love to do whilst traveling is visiting bookshops in the towns we visit, perusing the shelves to see whether there is a treasure somewhere, waiting to be found.

The walls of our living room are lined with floor to ceiling bookshelves, and there are bookshelves also in the study, the bedroom and the nursery. And the kitchen has a special shelf for cookbooks.

Books are precious to me.

So it might seem odd that I was one of the early adopters of the e-reader. I was thrilled to get an Amazon Kindle for Christmas when they first came out, five or so years ago. Our family is spread all over the world and we have always traveled. After too many trips lugging kilograms of books from country to country, loathe to part with them even once they had been read, I could see the appeal of a single device that allowed me to carry more books than ever before with no additional weight. It was a matter of practicality.

Over the years, I have developed greater appreciation for the e-reader and the e-book. Electronic reading is convenient for travel, yes, that assumption has been borne out, but even at home I have now started reading e-books. My new Kindle with its backlight makes for particularly convenient night-time reading. The Kindle app allows me to check in and read on my phone when I have nothing with me at all, no book, no e-reader (I should add that these moments are rare, as my habit of carrying a book everywhere I went started when I was very young  - you never know when you might be caught in a queue). The one-click page-turn saves me from needing two hands to read, a real bonus when I am also cooking, for example, or breastfeeding (which will soon be a concern all over again). And now that I am reviewing books, it is handy to be able to highlight sections and draft notes as I read, without needing to pull out a pen or a pencil and mark up delicate pages.

I also had a breakthrough a few weeks ago that I am loathe to admit here. I was reading Ian McEwan's new book, Sweet Tooth, which I had pre-ordered in hardback from Amazon. Because I was under pressure to read it quickly for a book club, I also purchased an e-book copy so that I could be sure I would have it with me wherever I was. After doing most of the reading electronically, I picked up the hardback on the weekend to finish it off. And... I found it very uncomfortable. The hardback was large and unwieldy and difficult to hold. It had a dustcover which kept coming loose and, being very pregnant at the moment, this was particularly frustrating when I lay on my bed to read, trying to find a position that was both comfortable for my belly and comfortable for holding the book. My hand got tired and after a while I ended up switching back to the e-reader. Outrageous!!

I have to say that this is really only a problem, though, with a hardback book, or with what I call 'the new hardback', those hardback-sized paperbacks that are too large to fit in a handbag (honestly, what is the point? What were you thinking, publishers??). Or, as fellow book- and lifestyle-blogger Trish (from Love, Laughter, and a Touch of Insanity) points out, paperback tomes that are 1000+ pages. I have recently started reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, and I don't think I would done so this year if it had required me to carry that massive book around with me. The ideal paper book for comfy reading is flexible and small enough to hold in one hand and fit in a regular-sized handbag. Given the choice, I would always prefer to read a real book in this kind of paperback form than an e-book.

But I have so many books in my collection that there is really no need for me to own copies of every book I now read. For example, I feel no desire these days to own copies of the lighter reads I pick up, the chick lit and romance I might read on a beach holiday. Novels that I am interested in from a literary perspective, books that stay with me, which might merit a re-read later in life - these are a different story. I still like to own them on paper, even if I have first read them electronically.

I was surprised to find that this behaviour, which I had wondered about and considered strange, is in fact consistent with the patterns of most e-readers. Digital bestseller lists are dominated by genre novels, like romance and thrillers. Like me, people tend to read 'airport fiction' on e-readers, but they still read literary fiction in paper form.

Interestingly, Nicholas Carr of the Wall Street Journal suggests that the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon would not have happened without e-books, because reading electronically allowed people, who otherwise might have been embarrassed to be seen reading the trilogy, to do so in public with no-one the wiser. So there is another benefit of an e-reader: public privacy, as it were.

But the results of a study done by Pew Research Centre earlier this year found that almost 90% of e-readers also continue to read physical volumes. I was very pleased to hear this. In other words, it is not that e-reading is replacing paper reading, but rather that the two seem to be co-existing - for now - and serving different purposes for the same people, as they do for me. E-reading is a complement to paper reading, much like audio books.

So there you have it. E-reading, thus far, has added to our reading options, rather than reducing them. As for me? I prefer e-books for travel, and for the purpose of reading genre fiction or 'big' books. Literary fiction, books that I treasure, I prefer to own in hard copy - either immediately or after first reading them electronically and discovering how much I love them. And for collecting? I prefer signed first-edition hardbacks, please!

What about you? Do you prefer the ease of an e-reader? Have you succumbed so completely to this new technology that you now read e-books exclusively? Or are you a traditionalist who refuses to pick up an e-reader? Or do you, like me, prefer one or the other depending on the book and the time? I am curious about other people's reading habits, so drop me a line and let me know!

My Kindle Kometh!

After only a very short wait, my Kindle Paperwhite and my gorgeous Gelaskins artwork arrived on the same day - oh happy, happy day! How excited was I!

I waited until Iggy was asleep to open up my packages and apply my Gelaskin to the Kindle, and then place my Kindle into its protective cover. Amazon's Kindle packaging has developed in leaps and bounds since I received my first Kindle, and I was tempted to keep the sleek black box after opening it up. Similarly, the texture and feel of the Kindle itself is much nicer than on older models - it just feels pleasant in my hands.

I switched the machine on and started using it immediately, thrilled that it had arrived already charged up.

And my assessment thus far: I absolutely love it! It is everything I hoped it would be and more. It is slightly smaller and more compact than I thought it would be, but with the cover on, the size of it and the substance of the cover still allows me to hold the Kindle just as I would a book - propped open by my thumb and little finger, or clasped in between the fingers and thumb of one hand (see below for illustration of said comfy reading positions). The light is just what I wanted - when the brightness is reduced, it is very easy on the eyes, even whilst reading in complete darkness, and Bibliohubby has told me that it disturbs him far less than when I use my iPhone at night.

The response time of the Kindle Paperwhite is also very good (though it is not as immediate as an iPad, I must admit), and the touchscreen works very well and easily for one-handed page-turning. It took me a little while to get used to the highlighting function on this screen, as it is slightly different to what I'm used to on Apple devices, but now that I know how to do it, it's easy. Yesterday I used the touchscreen keyboard to make a note or two, and found that to be convenient. I have already downloaded a book from the Kindle store and that, too, worked easily and quickly, through the 3G connection. And when it did come time to charge my Kindle for the first time, I was relieved to find that it charges much faster than my old Kindle and the battery power is far better.

I also love the screensavers on this international version - no ads for us in Australia. There are artistic black and white renderings of pen nibs, inkwells, typewriter keys, pencils - for a writer / reader, all very apt and pleasing. The cover is attractive and I love that its magnetic closure automatically puts the Kindle to sleep when it is closed, and wakens it when it is opened.

Essentially I am happy with this product, and delighted with my purchase. It was well worth waiting for and I think I will be using this to read for a long time.

Now, as promised, some photos of my new toy!

This is what the Paperwhite looks like from the front, with Gelaskin artwork applied and one of the Kindle screensavers in place:

This is what my Kindle looks like from the back, with the Gelaskin applied:

How gorgeous is that! You can't see it in these pictures, but the names of the books featured in this artwork are beautifully whimsical - King Pear instead of King Lear, The Merchant of Guiness, A Prune with a View, A Tale of Two Lychees, The Taming of the Cue and so on. There is so much detail here I could gaze at it for ages, and it really does enhance my enjoyment of the Kindle itself.

Here is a picture that gives you an idea of the size of the Kindle Paperwhite, once encased in the custom Kindle cover I bought from Amazon - not too much bigger than my oversized sunglasses, a perfect fit for most handbags:

And here is what I mean when I say the size is just right for my two favourite book-holding positions:



Anyone considering a similar purchase - I say, go for it!

Sunday Salon - e-readers

Another reason I need to stop buying hard-copy books for a while: I just ordered a new Kindle from Amazon. I already own one - the original Kindle, from several years ago - but it is no longer functional. I tried to take it on our recent trip but after charging it just before we left, I found it had already run out of battery power by the time I took it out on the plane. So I didn't use it once, the entire trip. This was incredibly frustrating; whilst I had brought several hard-copy books with me, I was also deeply engrossed in another book on my Kindle, and I couldn't access it except on my phone, and even then I had to wait to access it until we reached a location with wi-fi.

We have an iPad, and we traveled with it. When it was first purchased, it was kinda-sorta 'my' iPad - I was the one who had really pushed for one. I downloaded the Kindle app and thought I was good to go. But that lasted oh, all of five minutes. Bibliohubby's home computer is a clunky old beast that takes a good half hour to churn into action, so unless he is doing something substantial, the iPad has (understandably) become his electronic gadget of choice. I don't begrudge him this, particularly as I have a flashy Macbook Pro which I bought just before little Iggy was born, about two years ago now. But a 13-inch laptop is not a handy bedtime reading companion, especially when much of my reading is done after lights-out, and I am trying to cause minimal disruption to the other occupant(s) in bed. Of course the iPad has also been co-opted by Iggy. Anyone with a child will know that Apple devices are like crack cocaine to children. On our trip we downloaded several episodes of Curious George, Iggy's favourite show, to the iPad, and this is how we lulled him to sleep on flight after flight. Very useful, but again, not terribly conducive to fulfilling my reading needs.

I thought I might purchase either a (functioning) dedicated e-reader or a tablet with e-reader functionality on our trip. Initially what I really wanted was an iPad Mini (confession: I'm a bit of an Apple junkie. I can't walk past an Apple store without wanting to buy a new iPod or a new accessory, even though I have plenty of both). But I was a little concerned that it wouldn't take long before the same fate that befell 'my' iPad would also befall the Mini. So I decided to do some considered research before making a purchase. Here is the list of what I was looking for in my device:

• good e-reader capability (goes without saying);
• a backlight of some kind so that I can read at night without disturbing Bibliohubby, and whilst breastfeeding baby number two when she comes along;
• a backlight that is relatively easy on my eyes and does not disturb my sleep (I know, it's a lot to ask);
• ability to switch from black-on-grey to white-on-black writing, and to alter size of letters, brightness etc;
• good battery power;
• easy charging;
• a touchscreen;
• ability to use Kindle app and / or access Kindle e-books (vital as I already have a Kindle library);
• ideally, the device itself should be pretty, and have colour capability;
• also ideally, I would also be able to access limited non e-reader apps - such as Goodreads, Blogger etc, so that I could do all book-related things on the one device.

Here are the conclusions I came to:

• There are a confusing number of dedicated e-readers on the market today. Even if one decides on a Nook, or a Kobo, or a Kindle, deciding which unit to purchase within the suite of products available under the umbrella each of those brands is in itself confusing. In Canada, I was tempted by the Kobo. The Kobo Glo seemed to have what I was looking for in terms of touchscreen and backlight, but when I caught sight of the Kobo Mini I was seduced by its size (bigger than an iPhone, smaller than your typical e-reader). Of course, the Kobo Mini doesn't have a backlight, so that was that. In the States, I liked the display for the Nook in Barnes & Noble and might have been sold on one, especially as the available covers were gorgeous - vintage New Yorker cartoons, etc. But customer service was awful and then I heard that Barnes & Noble might soon be following Borders to liquidation land (sniff!). And the Nook, too, came in so many sizes and varieties that I couldn't commit to any one of them. 
• Buying a dedicated e-reader, for the most part, restricts you to reading and purchasing e-books from the online bookshop affiliated with that e-reader. That means that I was not going to be able to use a Nook or a Kobo and continue to read my Kindle books, or purchase from Amazon's Kindle store. Some e-readers allow you to download books in other formats onto the e-reader from a computer, but I wanted the more direct, user-friendly ability to be able to purchase and download with one click from my e-reader itself.
• Almost all e-reader brands now also have colour versions available with internet access - but these are actually tablets, rather than dedicated e-readers. So what was the difference between purchasing one of these and purchasing an iPad Mini?
• I then came across this excellent e-reader comparison on ChamberFour, which strongly asserts that the iPad and iPad Mini outclass all other tablets. I read that with relief because at least I could now disregard all tablets in the e-reader brands, so the Kindle Fire (which had been tempting me) was no longer an option.
• It has been widely reported recently that the kind of light emitted by gadgets such as iPads, smart phones and laptop computers interfere with your sleep. This makes sense to me - when I turn my iPhone on at night to read it takes my eyes a few minutes to adjust, and those few minutes can be quite painful. Apparently the effect is similar to daylight and sends the same signals to the brain, making it harder to resume sleeping after using a device that emits this kind of light.
• I love so many things about the iPad Mini. Bibliohubby teases me that I'm like Goldilocks - my iPhone is too small, the iPad is too big, but the iPad Mini is ju-ust right! It's true! And in addition to its perfect size, I love the look of it, I love its functionality, I love that it is in the 'same family' as my other devices which means that, if I purchased one, I could use the same charger across the board, for my phone, my reader, my laptop - so much easier than carrying multiple chargers on flights. BUT: it is twice as expensive as dedicated e-readers and it didn't seem to be much cheaper in duty free or in North America than it is in Australia. Not worth buying on the trip. And I couldn't stop thinking about what would happen if I did buy it: soon I will have two children. Next trip, they will both have their own favourite shows. And their own favourite games. Yup - it would be co-opted. And did I really need access to the internet on my reading device? I do after all have a phone and a laptop, both of which can be used for that purpose. Sure, it would be convenient, but if the cost is losing control of the device down the track then that convenience is lost.
• Unlike the iPad Mini, which emits the sleep-interrupting light, it started to sound like the Kindle Paperwhite had devised a new kind of backlight, which was easier on the eyes and, potentially, easier on our sleep. I read this entry at Chamber Four about why someone who had always been anti-Kindle ended up buying a Kindle Paperwhite and I was intrigued.
• I have been an Amazon user since day dot. Seriously, well before it was a publicly listed company (one of my major regrets is not buying shares the day they announced on their homepage that they were going public). When I was a young undergraduate student, I used to trawl Amazon and write reviews. This was in the early '90s, folks. I know that people are anti-Amazon for various reasons including their DRM scheme (heavy rights restrictions on digital content). But I have a Kindle library and an Amazon loyalty and the reality is, I will keep using them and I love the Kindle app too much to change to another e-book-buying platform. I especially love the fact that the Kindle app keeps my place in whatever book I'm reading so that if I put down my iPhone and pick up the iPad, I can keep reading from the same place I left off and vice versa. I also love the highlighting feature, which has become increasingly useful as I have started writing reviews. So when it came down to it, I needed something that was Kindle-compatible.
• The Kindle Paperwhite is more expensive in its international version but it is still half the price of an iPad Mini. It has a touchscreen as well as a backlight. The battery power is supposed to be great - much better than the iPad's. And the backlight is easier on the eyes. And... (hopefully) it wouldn't be co-opted by my family members.

And there you go! Decision made. But I didn't end up making my purchase on our trip. I was too overwhelmed by the choices on offer and by my own churning thought processes, and too underwhelmed by the cost differentiation.

Since returning to Australia and during this late stage of pregnancy, when I am waking up every single night restless and needing to read before getting back to sleep again, I have been using my iPhone at night and the small bright screen is driving me crazy. So just the other day, I bit the bullet. I ordered an Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. And I am so excited about it.

I lost out on access to other apps, but I got, more or less, everything else that I wanted. And then I came across this excellent site, and discovered that I could even prettify my Kindle! So I have now ordered my Paperwhite and some artwork for it, and I am awaiting the arrival of both with great anticipation. I will post pictures and let you know what I think when it is up and working.

In the meantime: I posted this because in my search for the perfect e-reader for me I found that it was incredibly helpful to read about the experiences of other people who had been on the same journey. It's a vast, confusing landscape out there. I hope this does help someone.

Anyone care to share their own e-reader travails? What do you use to download and read e-books?