Quote:
Originally Posted by jakewastaken
Worse yet are the people who think I'm some kind of traitor - as if the format of the book is literally more important than the text itself, sheesh. Oh no, I stopped supporting the paper book industry, everybody panic...
|
i've noticed this seems to be a position held by many of the rabid anti-e-books, and i admit i just don't understand it. if it's the book-object which is so important, logically you could give them a telephone directory with a lovely cover, printed on expensive paper, and they would be happy. personally, i don't care how nice the cover is, you won't catch me reading the telephone directory. or at the very least, not the paper version : e-telephone directory is so much lighter on the wrists.
i was very excited this weekend because for the first time i got to demo my lent cybook to a stranger !! my friends know all about it now (one of them has a new
hilarious joke : "so did bookeen hire you to their sales department yet ?" (
every time she sees me.
) but since it's not mine at first i was quite paranoid about taking it out of my appartment. now i've started carrying it around with me in my bag to read whenever i have some time.
sunday i was having a drink and reading on a café terrasse, and a lady asked if she could share my table because all the others were full. she took out her own (paper) book and we were reading there quite companiably for some time, and then finally she asked me "what is that you're reading on ? is that a screen ?" naturally i leapt at the chance to explain everything. she thought it was a nice gadget and was admittedly impressed with the quality of the screen, but beyond that was quite skeptical. she even asked me "but what is the
point of reading on that instead of a paper book ?" (i had plenty to reply to that, you can imagine). she listened to me and didn't reject it out of hand but at the end she patted her paper book affectionately and told me she wasn't ready to switch. maybe in the future. i offered to write down the url of this forum for her and she insisted "no no, thank you, really, i'll remember."
i'm pleased overall though ; she had never heard of e-ink or liseuses or ebooks, and now she knows. that's one more person...