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?
I have been reading mostly digital for the last 3-4 years. We have two iPads and a Asus Transformer but the device I use to read is my 5” Samsung phone, very crisp screen, screen big enough to read but small enough that it is the device I have on my person when I have time to read.
I have read hundreds of books on it and the phone I had before it.
I still read both. My son gave me a beautifully-made edition of “The Border Trilogy” by Cormac McCarthy, and it is a pleasure to hold and look at. I like Kindle for access to old, out-of-print books that I can get for free or only a few bucks. I also like it for its convenience. There are no bookstores around here anymore, so if I want a hard copy of a book, I have to wait for an Amazon order. With Kindle, if a book or a certain author comes to mind, I can look up the books and have them right away. It is also handy for while I’m sitting at the mechanic’s or the doctor’s waiting room — I don’t have to decide before I leave what I am going to read, and I can switch to something else if the wait is long. And, when I sit on the porch to read, I don’t have the annoyance of wind blowing the pages or having to worry about losing the light when dusk comes.
A book on Kindle is a book. I don’t find it any more isolating than any other book. It is some of the other applications that may discourage interaction with others.
I don’t care for magazines on Kindle.
Both. It depends where I am, and which I feel like reading. I’ve got 3 books on the go right now, 2 on the e-reader, and one dead tree.
Free downloads of books out of copyright in various formats.
www.gutenberg.org
My dead tree right now is Room 1219. The Life Of Fatty Arbuckle, The Mysterious Death of Virginia Rappe, And The Scandal That Changed Hollywood.
St. Francis of Assisi by G. K. Chesterton
It’s paper for me, except for current events. Then, of course, it’s FreeRepublic. I would be reading a lot more books if not for FreeRepublic.
Here’s my favorite of recently read books:
Darwin’s Doubt by Stephen C. Meyer
The problem with dead trees is they can drive you out of your house and bankrupt you very quickly. One seven shelf bookcase, 7 feet tall by 2 feet wide from Office Depot costs about $285.00. It holds about 140 books. There are now four in my living room at a total cost of a little less than $1,200 and there’s no more wall spac for any more. They can hold a total of 560 DTBs (Dead Tree Books). OTOH a single $150.00 Kindle holds 1,100 electronic books and can access and additional infinite number in the Amazon cloud. If it’s an iPad or similar advanced device it can do an infinity of additional tasks.
Uh, which one? ;’)
This is the darndest thing.
I picked up some books at a used book sale a couple of weeks ago. A couple of days ago, I started reading one I THOUGHT was by Kurt Vonnegut. Just now, I looked at it and noticed it was NOT by him. For 101 pages, I thought I was reading Kurt Vonnegut. Geez.
It’s by Kim Wozencraft. Her first novel called “Rush.”
Very well written for a first novel.
The Screwtape Letters
All the books at your fingertips until the power goes out.
And I have some photographic memory recall. Thumbing through a book, I can often (but not always) find a historical passage or quote I want to cite.
There are word searches in digital media I know, but I don’t file things in my head that way.
Being able to go to google and search for something isn’t the same as knowing it yourself and having the recall. I reference the books for FR and elsewhere to provide exact wording vs. my memory recall.
I just finished a book on the mafia, MCA, the music business, the justice department, the IRS, and LA courts.
Not sure what I’ll pick up next. I’ve got far more reading “to tackle” so I’m not looking at buying something right now.
Dead Tree.
I have a Kindle, and it’s still in the box. Was a Christmas present 2012.
Jack Vance’s Planet of Adventure. The best classic lasers and swords planetary sci-fi ever written, all with the unique Jack Vance take on it. Actual book, a whopping big collection with all the books in the series. I might have to go electronic eventually to get some of the harder to find stuff from Vance.
Freegards
I have a Kindle. I use it to download free samples.
Then if I like a sample, I usually buy the book in hardcover.
Science Has Great News for People Who Read Actual Books: http://mic.com/articles/99408/science-has-great-news-for-people-who-read-actual-books
All being read on my Fire Phone/Kindle Fire though I have Franklin's Autobiography several times over in dead tree media (both paperback and hardback) and also have King's Needful Things in Hardback.
I love my Kindle Fire and my Fire phone for reading. But I still buy books in hardback form and sometimes paperback (which I detest) I know eventually the inevitable Zombiepocalypse will be upon us and electricity will be at a premium. Dead tree media needs nothing but daylight to function and if need be can be used to start fires and/or as a source for emergency T.P. ;)