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Dead Tree OR Electrons - What are you reading? [Sat. Vanity]
Self | 09/21/13 | Self

Posted on 09/21/2013 6:53:41 AM PDT by SES1066

I have always been a reader and one of my snobbish instincts has been to shun people who do not read. Houses without books or magazines leave me cold. Yet now I realize that I have not bought a dead tree book in months and I have hit that Amazon link "Tell the publisher" many many times!

On my iPad I have more than 240 books plus several Bible versions and multiple periodicals. Now I find myself refreshing my mind about a particular passage in a book in minutes instead of almost never. Additionally, I am privileged to be able to audit Professor Donald Kagan's Yale course on Ancient Greece.


TOPICS: Books/Literature; Business/Economy; Computers/Internet; Society
KEYWORDS: amazon; kindle; nook; pages; paper; periodicals; reading
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So how are my fellow FReepers finding this sea-change in life? At one time I would never be found without at least a paperback or several magazines wherever I went. Now, with my electronics, I can read, listen to music and self-entertain with the best of them.

HOWEVER that is a danger in and of itself, is it not? When we self-isolate from our fellows, are we risking fellowship and interaction not taken? Many of us mourn the "Good Old Days" of when people sat on the porch in the evening and were neighborly! How much worse is this isolating electronics than the former villans of radio and TV that killed the above 'tradition?

1 posted on 09/21/2013 6:53:41 AM PDT by SES1066
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To: SES1066

At Winter’s End—Robert Silverberg

My 37th dead tree this year.


2 posted on 09/21/2013 6:56:59 AM PDT by bigheadfred (INFIDEL)
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To: SES1066

Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design


3 posted on 09/21/2013 6:59:10 AM PDT by Gadsden1st
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To: SES1066
Yet now I realize that I have not bought a dead tree book in months ...

That's me too. I'm all in for reading on my iPad. My latest book and one that I can certainly recommend:

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel


4 posted on 09/21/2013 7:00:43 AM PDT by InterceptPoint
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To: SES1066
At a neighbor's recent garage sale, one couple with two pre-teens in tow asked the price of some books. When it was pointed out that it was only an old, incomplete, supermarket encyclopedia, he replied, "Yeah, the kids can find anything on the computer.....but there's something about opening a book..."
5 posted on 09/21/2013 7:06:53 AM PDT by Roccus
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To: SES1066

I prefer dead tree reading. I’m in the library a minimum of once a month, but now with winter on its way, that will become more like 2-3 times a month.


6 posted on 09/21/2013 7:08:10 AM PDT by Gabz (Democrats for Voldemort.)
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To: SES1066

I am currently reading “War & Peace” in the “dead tree version”.

My nightly Bible readings are also dead tree style.

I Love the weight of the book in my hands, the texture of the pages, the smell of the oxidizing paper and cardboard, and in the case of the Bible, the aroma and tactile pleasure of the pliable leather and gold tipped pages of onion-skin that caress my fingers as I turn the pages. It is like playing the real guitar instead of a “Guitar Hero” Midi controller.

Reading, for me, is a totally sensual experience! LOL!


7 posted on 09/21/2013 7:08:46 AM PDT by left that other site (You Shall Know the Truth, and the Truth Shall Set You Free...John 8:32)
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To: SES1066

a household of bibliophiles here

We moved recently and took only one bed room and no family room furniture and it was still a 25,000 lb. move.

Didn’t break down and do electronic for a long time, but in ‘09 I decided that between the air travel and always wanting five books minimum with me, that was the way to buy SOME of my purchases. Plus if you read by the pool or on a boat dock, e-readers are great.

Certain books require the physical item itself. Reference, of course, and books to be referred to later such as a tome on the bard’s histories.

I ended up spending a career in construction and as a youngster I told myself, well maybe I will build the largest book store in town. Sure enough, twenty some years ago I built the first Borders Books when the first started to leave their university store Michigan market.

Of course, selling out ruined them and eventually I got a Barnes and Noble discount card. The wife spoke to their corporate office one time and found out what we had spent as logged on that card and it was obscene — we have few other vices.


8 posted on 09/21/2013 7:11:27 AM PDT by KC Burke (Officially since Memorial Day they are the Gimmie-crat Party.)
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To: SES1066

I am suspicious of a book that can update (revise) itself every time I turn it on. I want my books to stay the same, always. Trees grow back. No harm done.


9 posted on 09/21/2013 7:12:56 AM PDT by The Public Eye
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To: SES1066

For me it’s dead trees and electrons. Reading “A Thread of Grace” in the electron version, and a handful in the dead tree version.


10 posted on 09/21/2013 7:15:42 AM PDT by Fzob (In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. Jefferson)
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To: SES1066

Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty


11 posted on 09/21/2013 7:15:53 AM PDT by InvisibleChurch (http://thegatwickview.tumblr.com/ http://thepurginglutheran.tumblr.com/)
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To: SES1066

Just finished the 11th “Dresden Files” novel on my iPad.


12 posted on 09/21/2013 7:18:21 AM PDT by Kip Russell (Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors -- and miss. ---Robert A. Heinlein)
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To: SES1066

Boks on taep for the illetr, iliter, folks how cant reed.


13 posted on 09/21/2013 7:23:39 AM PDT by outofsalt ("If History teaches us anything it's that history rarely teaches us anything")
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To: SES1066; Salvation
Interesting. You just made me realize that although we have two Bibles in the house, we haven't read them in years. Salvation posts the USCC readings every day, and we read them here.

5.56mm

14 posted on 09/21/2013 7:27:39 AM PDT by M Kehoe
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To: SES1066
Most of my reading the past few years has been on a Kindle, the 3g version that can download anywhere. I like the one hand hold and operation.

When I got to the cliff hanger ending of Enemies Foreign and Domestic late one night, the other two books of the trilogy were on my Kindle two minutes later.

I still have hundreds of paper books and lots of magazines. I am sold on the Kindle.

15 posted on 09/21/2013 7:31:03 AM PDT by SpeakerToAnimals (I hope to earn a name in battle)
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To: SES1066
I'm perusing botany field guides now all the time. Sometimes my field guides don't include a new forb I may stumble upon, so I'm forced to turn to the Internet for identification help. But it's not the same.

Nothing beats a full-color field guide held in the hand.

16 posted on 09/21/2013 7:31:45 AM PDT by Flycatcher (God speaks to us, through the supernal lightness of birds, in a special type of poetry.)
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To: SES1066
I choose dead trees... the only exceptions being texts so old and/or obscure that I have to settle for the electron substitute.

Right now, in the likely order I will read them:

Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel, by Frances and Joseph Gies
Thomas Telford, by LTC Rolt

Although somewhat mathematically dyslexic, I have always liked things mechanical; pre-20th Century engineering and manufacturing techniques fascinate me. I checked out a copy of Rolt's A Short History of Machine Tools (which was removed from my public library; they needed more room for the free Wi-Fi loafer's lounge and the ever-expanding Black Empowerment section) and was hooked; I have since purchased a number of his books, which I enjoy immensely. He and Dorothy Hartley (author of Made in England, etc) are two people whose writing styles fit me like a pair of comfortable shoes.

Mr. niteowl77

17 posted on 09/21/2013 7:40:07 AM PDT by niteowl77 ("There's nothing a vulture hates more than biting into a glass eye.")
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To: SES1066

Reading paper books is kind of annoying now. I’m reading a Chronicles of Narnia book to my son that I got off the shelf, I would rather read it on my Nexus but I’m too cheap to buy it again.


18 posted on 09/21/2013 7:45:05 AM PDT by Sawdring
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To: left that other site

War And Peace was a good book, but I had to put it down two times to read two different books to change things up.


19 posted on 09/21/2013 7:46:54 AM PDT by Sawdring
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To: SES1066

All dead tree here, I have no e-reader I have no intent of ever getting an e-reader. I get pleasure from books above their content. I love walking into a room full of books, both ones that are already mine and ones that CAN be mine for some amount of cash. I love touching books, I love the smell of books, I love knowing books are there. And I like to read them.

And being an anti-social person I like the isolation, it means less people are hassling me trying to get me to engage in their group.


20 posted on 09/21/2013 7:52:14 AM PDT by discostu (This is Jack Burton in the Pork Chop Express, and I'm talkin' to whoever's listenin' out there.)
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