Quote:
Originally Posted by ahi
Do you think your purchases are notably more numerous than that of the average avid reader without an eBook reading device?
- Ahi
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honestly, i don't know. all of my friends are avid readers, however few of them read exclusively books they've purchased ; many of them frequent the library (avidly
). i remember the day a friend of mine told me, his eyes shining, a look of near exaltation on his face, that he had made an "amazing discovery" : the public library !! i stared at him like he was from the moon, but in his defense he grew up in a provincial town whose library was pretty small (as he explained to me) and even after having lived in paris for several years it hadn't occurred to him until then to try the library here, and when he did he was completely bowled over by the sheer quantity and selection of books available (for free !).
even the ones who frequent the library *also* buy books, and we've got quite a little "traffic" of paperbook sharing amongst ourselves, but i honestly don't know how many they purchase per year and how that compares to my habits.
i'd say i purchase more books than the average person, but probably fewer than one or two of my friends (note i'm talking about how much we purchase, not how much we read, which is probably more or less comparable). in particular i'm thinking of one friend, who showed me one day the books she had bought in preparation for 3 weeks holiday at her parents' house on the southwest coast. there were about 20 of them, and i said to her "seriously ? you're going to read all of them ? won't you do anything else while you're there ?" and she said, "nope. that's my clever plan : i've invited you along so you can talk to my parents and keep them busy so i can get some reading done."
2 weeks later, as i was about to leave to meet her down there, she called me up and asked me if i could go to the bookstore for her and get a couple of titles to bring down with me, because she had run out of books to read.
since she doesn't go to the library (she doesn't want to deal with finding time to go and making sure she gets them back on time) she definitely buys more than i do, but i think she's sort of in a class of her own.
however i can say that since i've gotten a liseuse, i buy almost no paper books anymore. that was actually part of the plan ; ebooks take up so much less space... and as i think i said, i probably purchase more ebooks now than i did paperbooks before, definitely more than i purchased *new* paper books before.