Those Books that aren't Digital

[RDaneel54]

What I'm referring to are the older ones, not new pbooks. I was in a large antique store yesterday and found 3 books that I couldn't resist. None of them are in digital format so I now have them in hard cover.

I really, really prefer reading digitally now. I like being able to read from whichever device I prefer for the situation I'm in. Mostly, my Kindle Paperwhite, with the Kindle Fire for night reading and my iPhone for when I'm out and don't want to carry anything.

I occasionally read pbooks, but they really seem inconvenient to me now after six years on ereaders. But when a book looks really interesting it is hard to resist.

How about you?

Dean

[fjtorres]

It happens.
I have a scanner for those cases.

[goldilocks]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

It happens.
I have a scanner for those cases.

Me too! Can't read that small print anymore!

[cromag]

Yep. I have a favorite used book store, and I'll even go to the local library. I'm currently finishing a paperback I picked up at a thrift store. (Fifty cents for a paperback in great shape vs. seven dollars for the ebook.)

And I have an armful of 60s vintage science fiction magazines with many short stories that have never been reprinted on paper, let alone digitally.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by cromag

Yep. I have a favorite used book store, and I'll even go to the local library. I'm currently finishing a paperback I picked up at a thrift store. (Fifty cents for a paperback in great shape vs. seven dollars for the ebook.)

And I have an armful of 60s vintage science fiction magazines with many short stories that have never been reprinted on paper, let alone digitally.

I have some of those old magazines too. Old issues of Analog from 1963 and 1964. A friend had been to an auction and got a bunch of them while bidding on something. He gave them to me as he knew I'm a fan of Science Fiction.

[cromag]

Originally Posted by crich70

I have some of those old magazines too. Old issues of Analog from 1963 and 1964. A friend had been to an auction and got a bunch of them while bidding on something. He gave them to me as he knew I'm a fan of Science Fiction.

Well, I certainly hope your friend read them first! They published some good stories back then!

[DrNefario]

I'm buying more second-hand books than ever, I think. The move to ebooks has broken my attachment to owning a high-quality physical object, which meant I almost always bought new in the past, but there are still things I can't get at a price I like electronically, so I go to charity shops and second-hand bookshops. And then other things quite often catch my eye while I'm there. The difference is that I now get rid of them after I've read them, instead of building up an ever-greater library.

I'm still happy to read pbooks, unless they're particularly unwieldy.

Pre-ebook, I used to pick up books I wasn't sure I'd like as part of special offers - 3-for-2, etc - or from remainder bookshops, or I'd borrow them from the library. It was a way of experimenting without having to risk much. Now there's a set price, and I have to pay it or not, and I often choose not. The speculative randomness has more-or-less gone from my book-buying. Second-hand paperbacks give me that back. (The library is still there, of course, but having a paperback gives me more flexibility on when to read it.)

Also, it's kind of fun, searching for that elusive book. I've bought almost all of Agatha Christie's extensive catalogue from charity shops. I have just six books, of about 80, left to find. I could buy them immediately online, but where's the fun in that? It's much better to take a walk around a nearby town and find an unexpected copy of the elusive Towards Zero in an animal-charity shop I hadn't even noticed before, with a very small book selection.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by cromag

Well, I certainly hope your friend read them first! They published some good stories back then!

I have to agree with you there. The old Science Fiction is still better than a good deal of the modern stuff with some exceptions. I don't know why that is, but there is almost an atmosphere about them for lack of a better word, that a good deal of modern SF seems to lack. Maybe because what was known to be impossible was less set than it is now, I don't know. I've bought a number of collections of classic SF at Amazon for my Kindle, but I imagine what is there is just a tiny fraction of what has been written between the start of modern SF (as a genre) and the early 70's onward.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by crich70

I have to agree with you there. The old Science Fiction is still better than a good deal of the modern stuff with some exceptions. I don't know why that is, but there is almost an atmosphere about them for lack of a better word, that a good deal of modern SF seems to lack. Maybe because what was known to be impossible was less set than it is now, I don't know. I've bought a number of collections of classic SF at Amazon for my Kindle, but I imagine what is there is just a tiny fraction of what has been written between the start of modern SF (as a genre) and the early 70's onward.

The main difference, I think, is that the dominant variant in the 50's and early 60's was adventure SF. Then came the New Wave with darker themes and a deeper focus on wordsmithing, soft SF became trendy for a while, and worst of all SF became respectable.

By now the genre is so mature no single sub-genre dominates, except maybe the more serious idea SF, so its a bit harder to find the freewheeling, anything goes stories of the pre-New Wave. It's out there, but harder to find.

(Except at, ahem, Baen, which set out to "return SF where it belongs: the gutter". )

[Tarana]

I can't read novels any longer due to vision issues, so if I really want to read it, I have to OCR it. Someone on this list recommended 1dollarscan.com and I've been happy with them. They convert it to a pdf format. The absolute cheapest they do the conversion for is $1 per 100 pages (round up), which is actually pretty good if you really want it as an ebook. The pdf file will not convert using Calibre, but is pretty easy to read on a tablet. They did a great job on a book that not only was printed very lightly, but so small it was a challenge even for someone with good eyes to read. The only caveat is that you don't get the book back. They slice the spine and feed the pages and everything is recycled.

If you really want it in epub or mobi, you'll need to buy something like ABBYY FineReader to convert the pdf to epub (and then transfer to mobi if you want it).

[Sydney's Mom]

I am totally digital, except I can't walk by the Costco book table. Most of the books I know are available digitally, but every once in awhile, I find a book I haven't heard of, so I don't know if it is available digitally, and I bite.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Tarana

I can't read novels any longer due to vision issues, so if I really want to read it, I have to OCR it. Someone on this list recommended 1dollarscan.com and I've been happy with them. They convert it to a pdf format. The absolute cheapest they do the conversion for is $1 per 100 pages (round up), which is actually pretty good if you really want it as an ebook. They will not convert using Calibre, but they are pretty easy to read on a tablet. They did a great job on a book that not only was printed very lightly, but so small it was a challenge even for someone with good eyes to read. The only caveat is that you don't get the book back. They slice the spine and feed the pages and everything is recycled.

If you really want it in epub or mobi, you'll need to buy something like ABBYY FineReader to convert the pdf to epub (and then transfer to mobi if you want it).

Have you tried this converter? They have it under promotion at the present (again) so it's free to get.
http://www.pdftoepub.com/

[Difflugia]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The main difference, I think, is that the dominant variant in the 50's and early 60's was adventure SF. Then came the New Wave with darker themes and a deeper focus on wordsmithing, soft SF became trendy for a while, and worst of all SF became respectable.

By now the genre is so mature no single sub-genre dominates, except maybe the more serious idea SF, so its a bit harder to find the freewheeling, anything goes stories of the pre-New Wave. It's out there, but harder to find.

(Except at, ahem, Baen, which set out to "return SF where it belongs: the gutter". )

It's also possible that you're comparing a selected sample of old SF with everything available now. I can think of a number of authors from the 50s and 60s that I like better than most of the modern stuff, but I can also think of modern authors that I like better than most of the old stuff.

I think the biggest factor is that there's just a lot of dreck out there, but the old stuff has had time to be filtered. The good stuff get saved, passed around and reprinted, while the crap gets discarded.

When I hit Amazon's list of SF, going through the stuff that's free and 99 cents feels like flipping through issues of Analog looking for a gem. When I went through the Baen CDs, I think there was something in the neighborhood of two hundred books and I only found about a dozen representing four or five authors that I really liked.

[tubemonkey]

If it's not digital, I pass it by.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Difflugia

When I went through the Baen CDs, I think there was something in the neighborhood of two hundred books and I only found about a dozen representing four or five authors that I really liked.

Four or five authors you already knew you liked?