I, for one, will NEVER own/read an e-book. I LOVE nothing more than the feel of a book in my hands. I never have less than three books going at a time, and I also read EVERYTHING from the back of soup cans to The Classics. :)
Same here. I seldom buy brand new books. I mostly buy at used book stores and Amazon with great success in finding the books I want at great prices.
I got my 80 yr old mother a Kindle for her birthday. Her idea. What with arthritis in her hands and the size of a lot of books, holding regular books was becoming problematic. Now she can take her Kindle to doctor’s appointments, etc and read what she wants. When she’s done, she just slips it in her purse; hardly any weight at all.
I don’t have a Kindle, but I know a lot of professors who do. Now that I have an iPad with Kindle, I read a lot for work and pleasure on it. The iPad lets me tote a ton of material without having to lug it around in my bag. I don’t have arthritis in my hands, but I am middle-aged and it’s nice not to have to carry everything I may read in a day from journal articles to email to student papers.
Books are nice, but so are ebooks.
The Kindle and iPad are great for reading newspapers, magazines and lightweight novels you would only need to read once (such as Grisham, King, Koonz).
I am not a fan however of the big-box bookstores like Borders, Barnes & Noble. Those places tend to be noisy, crowded and not conducive at all to finding good books to read. Also, most shelf space is dedicated to crap you would never want to shelve in your home library.
Amazon.com is the place I get most of my books these days. I do believe that the days of the brick & mortar stores are coming to an end, although B&N stands to hold out for a while.
Used to think that.
Filled up my apartment with books. When we met, my wife was appalled. (Of course she was pleased, too, since we read much of the same stuff and I had a lot of stuff she hadn’t read yet...).
She got me a Kindle - I now have a 5 year back log on books to read - and most of ‘em were free!!!! I have not bought many books since then - just ones not available on Kindle, or that had illustrations that need to be seen on pages.
My wife then bought herself the next-generation Kindle (4G). She can not only use it to read, but update her Facebook account, send email and even text.
Sorry, but paper pages are on the way to the “specialty” market or print on demand market.