09-26-2009, 02:05 AM | #31 |
neilmarr
Posts: 7,216
Karma: 6000059
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Monaco-Menton, France
Device: sony
|
I love the smell of a PRS-505 leather cover in the morning. N
|
09-26-2009, 07:38 AM | #32 | |
Snooty Bestselling Author
Posts: 1,485
Karma: 1000000
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Ipswich, QLD, Australia
Device: PRS-650
|
Quote:
He did imply that it would take a 'new generation' to use these ebooks... one not habituated to paper books. Hence, that people used to pbooks would generally NOT take to ebooks. Silly. Let's summarise the actual article: - a library without books? - ebook readers can hold lots of books and they're more transportable - I love paper. That might just be me. - rows and rows of pbooks inspire awe. That might just be me too. - I like knowing how far through a story I am. Computers don't tell me that. - ebook readers might encourage skimming - pbooks offer no distractions - ebook readers need to be recharged - ebook readers can be hacked/file-modified - I hope all libraries don't do this Meh. I think the 'oh fer crying out loud' gang have a fair point here |
|
Advert | |
|
09-26-2009, 09:12 AM | #33 | |
Grand Sorcerer
Posts: 7,452
Karma: 7185064
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Linköpng, Sweden
Device: Kindle Voyage, Nexus 5, Kindle PW
|
Quote:
The texture and smell discussion is in the part were the author tells her personal quirks and also says that these are not the things she are going to use in the argument. But she is honest and tell about this so we can be careful in reading the real arguments. The real arguments starts after "My first thought was..." |
|
09-26-2009, 12:25 PM | #34 | |
I eat books
Posts: 601
Karma: 5124
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Milan, Italy
Device: Gen3 PRS-505 PRS-600 PB360 PB302 K2 Opus BebookMini OnyxBoox K3 KDXG
|
Quote:
As for the rest, I'd like to point out to the author some books (pbooks, if she wants ) about censure through the age. Forbidden and banned books, in every format, don't have a nice, quiet life- physical censorship (as in paper glued to pages/passages or ink blotted), book fires, processes (think about Les Fleurs du Mal) and other "niceties" were all too common. At least one good thing out of the article is that I found the golden reason to love readers: don't (usually) have to fear about not using a bookmark or having somebody misplacing it (or the book if you placed the pbook opened upside down). |
|
09-26-2009, 01:12 PM | #35 | |||||
Grand Sorcerer
Posts: 5,185
Karma: 25133758
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: SF Bay Area, California, USA
Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3 (Past: Kobo Mini, PEZ, PRS-505, Clié)
|
Quote:
- How long is the book? (not that every thicker book is longer, but comparing a 700pp blockbuster novel to a young adult 145pp novel is easy, and identifying dense info nonfiction vs pop-reading nonfic is also easy. Filesize doesn't accurately give this info, and word count isn't part of any standard book listing display method.) - Light entertainment reading, research, or browse-and-explore art book? (Again, icons just don't indicate these categories.) - What era is the book from? (While reprints can make an older book look new, classics are often printed with covers that indicate their age/status.) - What's the intended reading audience for this book? (Cover icons indicate some of this, but there's a sameness to them that misses the variety in pbook covers: plain color paper, raised text or cut-out sections for supermarket bestsellers, fancy dust jackets, printed glossy hardcover, plain durable cloth cover.) Seeing a row of books on a shelf gives me a wealth of information we haven't figured out how to display well on a screen. And that's assuming the screen can show pictures at all--Sony's interface doesn't give me any reminders about why I loaded this book onto my reader. I'm okay with this. But I acknowledge it could be better, and it will need to be, for ebooks to reach mainstream acceptance. This is a problem (set of problems?) that doesn't compare to music; album covers never had the variety of book covers, and they were all the same size & shape. Quote:
It did take some getting used to, for that to mentally connect the same way that pbook sections did. (On the other hand, I no longer have to deal with trying to hold open the first and last thirty pages of the book, when it kept trying to close itself, nor the book *not* closing after it's been read because the spine is damaged.) Quote:
However, this is a technical issue, and batteries are improving all the time. When someone figures out how to run an ebook reader on the solar cells they use in cheap calculators, this problem will effectively vanish. Quote:
I suppose eventually (after DRM goes away), some bright company can put up an "ebook verification website," where you upload your book temporarily and they check the contents against the "official" version. It would scan your book and report "all text identical" or "less than .5% difference" or "your book contains 235 differences from our archive version" or whatever. (If it could check for italics, that'd be incredible. But I wouldn't expect it.) It might or might not return a list of the differences. Might be free to use if you can offer them legal copies of books they don't have in their database. Could potentially even do this with books with no legit public ebook version--because copying for personal use is okay, and archiving a non-publicly-accessible version for research purposes might be okay too. Quote:
However, art museums and galleries didn't vanish when photography got big, nor have they vanished with the introduction of digital artwork. I don't want pbooks gone, but I won't mind them gradually becoming an artistic and historical sphere, rather than a day-to-day life one. |
|||||
Advert | |
|
09-26-2009, 01:16 PM | #36 |
I eat books
Posts: 601
Karma: 5124
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Milan, Italy
Device: Gen3 PRS-505 PRS-600 PB360 PB302 K2 Opus BebookMini OnyxBoox K3 KDXG
|
I suppose in a way the "awe" factor is to be compared to what we're experiencing with music libraries. Once, you had cds, you displayed them, organised them, and so on. Nowadays- at least I noticed it- it's more on the size of the library in bytes, or the number of album/songs. And it won't stop people liking it to buy vinyls- which are in revival.
|
11-15-2009, 04:50 AM | #37 |
Blue Captain
Posts: 1,595
Karma: 5000236
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Australia
Device: Kindle Keyboard 3G,Huawei Ideos X3,Kobo Mini
|
Another problem with stinky books - is when you get the second hand variety that have been owned by a smoker. Yuck.
|
11-15-2009, 10:09 AM | #38 |
Moomin
Posts: 137
Karma: 202147
Join Date: Nov 2009
Device: Sony PRS-350
|
I used to wax romantic over the smell of old books - honestly, I loved it - and then the library where I work got a donation of dozens of crumbling, bug-infested, nasty old books that I had to go through. Sort of killed the magic of book-smell for me.
|
11-15-2009, 04:09 PM | #39 |
Wizard
Posts: 1,305
Karma: 1958
Join Date: Jan 2009
Device: iPod Touch
|
On the other hand shiny new plastic has it's own smell. The smell might be a result of toxic compounds setting and potentially hazardous but it smells good (aka new car smell).
There are a few things I miss about real books, but the smell is not one of them! I miss the fact I can lend a book to a friend (DRM sucks). |
11-15-2009, 08:01 PM | #40 |
Wizard
Posts: 1,385
Karma: 16056
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Asia
Device: Kindle 3 WiFi, Sony PRS-505
|
There are too many of these badly grounded, largely emotional defenses for traditional books.
Seems like a poor excuse to reject or at least resist on principle the digital and intangible usurping the physical and tangible, which is a noble enough stance but too often favors irrational emotional appeal over any real reasoning. |
11-16-2009, 12:40 PM | #41 | |
Wizard
Posts: 1,196
Karma: 1281258
Join Date: Sep 2009
Device: PRS-505
|
There's one point she makes that is a great justification for single-purpose ebook readers:
Quote:
While paper books have their attractions, there's a lot I don't miss: Old perfect-bound books whose glue is decaying so that the pages fall out. Large heavy books that won't stay open and need to be held down so you can see the page you're reading. Bookmarks that fall out so you lose your place and have to spend 10 minutes finding it again. etc etc |
|
Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Pocket Pro 5" Is the battery "Nokia" compatible for real?? | wayamauro | Astak EZReader | 76 | 02-24-2020 03:48 AM |
"Balanced copyright" and feedback from real people (not just corporate "persons") | llreader | News | 16 | 02-15-2010 08:27 AM |
Another "can't beat the smell of paper book" article | m-reader | News | 33 | 01-08-2010 03:45 PM |
"but i love real books" Why?? | troykm | Amazon Kindle | 23 | 12-31-2009 03:46 AM |
About that "Smell of Books" thing | kennyc | News | 6 | 12-05-2009 07:28 AM |