I’ve gone through several e-reader devices since the first e-ink ones came out. I tend to favor the Kindle system in terms of title availability, convenience of purchase and delivery, and reading experience on the device. The bizarre combination of features the first Kindle system comprised really changed the world for a lot of heavy readers, like me. Amazon has made some missteps, and I switched to a Nook Touch for several months due to the horrible battery and performance problems the Kindle Keyboard has with large libraries like mine. Now I’m on a Kindle Touch, which is fine, though personally I see little value to touch screens on these devices.
I have read at least a thousand books on e-ink readers, mostly Kindles, since they came out. In that time I have read only a handful of paper books, mostly back a couple of years ago when I still had a backlog of paperbacks sitting around. I found reading on e-ink-screened e-readers immediately and massively better than reading the paper books I had been surrounded by for my whole life.
Very recently, I was forced to read two books in hardback for the first time in 2-3 years, I found the experience annoying to the point where the distractions caused me to get less out of the material. Ink smears and papercuts. The weight on my wrist, having to turn pages physically, dog-earing corners to mark topics, dust jacket sliding everywhere as I held the book up…I couldn’t believe how miserable the experience was.
Granted, cutting back on nicotine gum might have made me a little twitchier than usual. But I really did find the experience annoying and was constantly wishing these books were available as ebooks.
I’ve read articles or comments by people who claim they have sincerely tried the Kindle or Nook but still prefer physical books. They talk about the tactile sense of the paper, the enjoyment of turning the pages, that kind of thing. Personally I don’t read books to rub the paper. That’s a kink I don’t have.
I think these guys are either lying or crazy, and should be watched carefully because they are almost certainly lizard men from V under the skin.
OK, that might be a little harsh. They are just sticking with what they have always done. But I genuinely don’t get it. For reading a lot of fiction, nothing beats an e-ink e-reader. It was obvious from the first time I tried it.
Do tablets make good e-readers?
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