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First, I don't really know who is buying these e-books. Maybe people who live in airports? Harried business travellers? Truly I do not know.
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Wow, the NY Times is covering news of interest to people he doesn't know. I suspect that most of his reaction is affected by the NY Times listing ebook sales rankings right next to pbook sales; if they'd been buried under "technological news," he never would have seen them. So this isn't, "what's with these ebook things? That's not news," as much as "how dare they imply that ebooks are as important as pbooks!"
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I've been in this exact spot before, minus the DVDs (I still have and often use a VCR. I prefer it the way I prefer trains to airplanes.
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Okay then. Established semi-luddite, someone who holds onto obsolete tech because he's more comfortable with it, rather than because he has any actual objections to the new stuff.
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Readers, like me, with groaning shelves, will stop being known as people who own a lot of books, and will be given the cobwebby mantle of collector.
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Yes, this will happen; no, not in his lifetime. Tech moves fast, but books have a whole lot of intertia. Pbooks are going to be the dominant form of reading for a long time yet; the format wars, DRM hassles, and lack of computers in much of the world will make sure of that. See
this map? Everywhere it's dark, is where ebooks won't be taking over anytime soon.
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About three years ago, I sold all of my records and CDs at a place on Mont Royal avenue called L'échange. The collection, procured mainly in my years of reviewing, felt like something I had grown out of, and I did have that iPod, and getting rid of the roomful of jewel cases and 12-inch records was in a way cathartic.
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Irrelevant aside: did he rip the CDs & albums before he sold them, thus joining the wave of digital pirates by creating a copy & selling the original? And is he casually mentioning this heinous theft on an internationally-viewed newspaper?