MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Don't Own an EBook, Not About to Get One.

Yapyap · 10-07-2012, 03:05 AM

I prefer to read books in the language in which they were written, when at all possible. For the genres I prefer, this means I read almost exclusively in English.

Bookshops here don't and never have had large sections for English books; translated books (in addition to being translated) can only ever represent a small selection of books published in those genres plus the costs are high, with an average new genre book costing between 18-25 €.

So browsing in bookshops, one of my favourite activities when I was a child, hasn't been something I've found particularly enjoyable or useful for the last twenty years.

Add to that living in a flat and having probably around 1500 paper books (I've never counted, so I'm not quite sure of the number, but I've bought many hundreds myself, adding to my mother's and to what my grandmother left behind), this pretty much meant I had more or less stopped buying - and reading - published books for several years before e-readers came along as there was no space (and the books I did buy, I had to buy online anyway, not after a bookshop browsing experience, which meant waiting for weeks to get the book + shipping costs in addition to the price of the book).

I've also never felt particularly comfortable with paperbacks - I find paperbacks hard to keep open and the small fonts as well as small line spacing make them irritating to read. Not impossible, but not pleasant. Hardbacks are better, but they also take up a lot more space and are more expensive.

So with all those factors, getting an ereader as soon as it became feasible - when I could (a) get my hands on one, and (b) when the first bookshops that would actually sell ebooks to me came along - was a no-brainer. I could finally read something else than fanfic again! The choice available to me is multitudes of times greater than browsing in a physical bookshop ever was or ever could be, I don't have to wait three weeks for an interesting-sounding book to get to me, and I don't need to worry about storage. And I can read it in physical comfort, not needing to worry about using effort to keep it open or the fonts being too small.

I still buy a handful of books in paper (preferably hardback if I can find it), if it's something I love so much that I really want to have it in my shelf to admire, too, and if it's something I'm pretty sure about wanting to re-read over and over again in the future. Or the rare times when it's something I think I really want to read but that isn't available as ebook (although the last time that happened, the paperbacks - the only edition available to buy - turned out to have such small print and narrow spacing and non-existing margins that I still haven't been able to even start them, as I know reading them will be a very uncomfortable experience).

I've never liked to read books in public, so reading something in a café isn't appealing - besides, I can't see any reason why one can't do that with an ebook.

10-07-2012, 03:05 AM	#37
Yapyap Guru Posts: 861 Karma: 3543721 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Estonia Device: Kindle Paperwhite, iPad 3, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge	I prefer to read books in the language in which they were written, when at all possible. For the genres I prefer, this means I read almost exclusively in English. Bookshops here don't and never have had large sections for English books; translated books (in addition to being translated) can only ever represent a small selection of books published in those genres plus the costs are high, with an average new genre book costing between 18-25 €. So browsing in bookshops, one of my favourite activities when I was a child, hasn't been something I've found particularly enjoyable or useful for the last twenty years. Add to that living in a flat and having probably around 1500 paper books (I've never counted, so I'm not quite sure of the number, but I've bought many hundreds myself, adding to my mother's and to what my grandmother left behind), this pretty much meant I had more or less stopped buying - and reading - published books for several years before e-readers came along as there was no space (and the books I did buy, I had to buy online anyway, not after a bookshop browsing experience, which meant waiting for weeks to get the book + shipping costs in addition to the price of the book). I've also never felt particularly comfortable with paperbacks - I find paperbacks hard to keep open and the small fonts as well as small line spacing make them irritating to read. Not impossible, but not pleasant. Hardbacks are better, but they also take up a lot more space and are more expensive. So with all those factors, getting an ereader as soon as it became feasible - when I could (a) get my hands on one, and (b) when the first bookshops that would actually sell ebooks to me came along - was a no-brainer. I could finally read something else than fanfic again! The choice available to me is multitudes of times greater than browsing in a physical bookshop ever was or ever could be, I don't have to wait three weeks for an interesting-sounding book to get to me, and I don't need to worry about storage. And I can read it in physical comfort, not needing to worry about using effort to keep it open or the fonts being too small. I still buy a handful of books in paper (preferably hardback if I can find it), if it's something I love so much that I really want to have it in my shelf to admire, too, and if it's something I'm pretty sure about wanting to re-read over and over again in the future. Or the rare times when it's something I think I really want to read but that isn't available as ebook (although the last time that happened, the paperbacks - the only edition available to buy - turned out to have such small print and narrow spacing and non-existing margins that I still haven't been able to even start them, as I know reading them will be a very uncomfortable experience). I've never liked to read books in public, so reading something in a café isn't appealing - besides, I can't see any reason why one can't do that with an ebook.