Have ebooks changed your reading habits?

[Geralt]

I think audiobooks even more than ebooks have changed my reading. I doubled the amount of books/pages "read" this year because of them.
As far as ebooks go, kindle(s) have been very helpful of getting the book I want. I read in English primarily and for last 5 years I've been living in places where they don't sell English books in brick and mortar shops. So Amazon and Kobo are a huge blessing to me. Kobo..though..less and less. It's been getting too expensive.
Also there's the whole deal with moving (which I did a lot, to another country and inside the same country....probably around 5-6 times in last 5 years). Having 90% of your library on kindle, helps a lot.

[Jack Torrance]

Originally Posted by Geralt

I think audiobooks even more than ebooks have changed my reading. I doubled the amount of books/pages "read" this year because of them.

I forgot about including Audiobooks. I got hooked a few years ago and have gone through a lot more pages if you count that. I have a daily commute of about 1 1/2 hours plus just casual stuff on the weekend. If I'm out doing projects at the house, I'm plugged in and listening.

I can't recall the last time the car radio wasn't programmed to Aux and actually played music.

[susan_cassidy]

I got my first Kindle, a K1, in May of 2008, and haven't read a paper novel since. My eyes aren't the greatest (in fact, I'm blind in the right one, due to an aneurysm), so being able to i crease the font size is perfect.

I tend to buy way more books than I did before, because of the ease of finding something new to read on Amazon. I used to go to the bookstore every 2 or 3 weeks, so I reread a lot more, just to have something to read.

[kyteflyer]

Originally Posted by LadyKate

I tend to read by series more (and rereading is so much more pleasant with not having to search the entire house to find book 2 lol)

I also tend to read by author when I find one I like, searching for all the books available.

What about you?

Exactly whats happened to me. Additionally, I think I am reading more because I can hold an ereading device in my hand much longer than a paper book. I tend to get a lot of muscle cramping with pbooks in recent years. Bit of a shame, I have several bookcases full of books, many of which I have not yet got round to reading, and which will have to be sold off at some point. (I used to just go on buying binges when out and wandering the bookstores, when I was younger)

I loved listening to audiobooks when driving to and from work, but not so much when sitting about the house. I'll still listen to something on long drives but now I am no longer working, I don't really have much use for them.

[ucfgrad93]

I'm reading more since I got my Kindle.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Jack Torrance

I forgot about including Audiobooks. I got hooked a few years ago and have gone through a lot more pages if you count that. I have a daily commute of about 1 1/2 hours plus just casual stuff on the weekend. If I'm out doing projects at the house, I'm plugged in and listening.

I can't recall the last time the car radio wasn't programmed to Aux and actually played music.

Yea, good point. Audiobooks is a pretty big game changer for me as well.

[patrickt]

Audio books are outstanding for those who can't read but that means you're using tablets or cell phones and not ereaders to have books read to you.

[cromag]

Not necessarily, quite a few ereaders have MP3 playback capability and a headphone jack.

[twowheels]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I've been reading primarily ebooks for so long (about 30 years now), that in all honesty I struggle to remember what my reading habits were before I started doing so. I started out with books from PG, but even many of my commercial ebooks are approaching 20 years old!

You're right, though - ebooks makes it a lot easier to read series in order, which is exactly what I generally do.

30 years? 30 years ago you could read the text faster than it would download!

I can imagine you now...

miniterm
atx4
atdt 555-5555
TS> connect unixhost
$ ftp 
ftp> open mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu
Connected to mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu
220 FTP server ready.
User (domain.name:(none)): ftp
331 Password required for user-name
Password: ftp
230 User user-name logged in.
ftp
ftp> ascii
200 Type set to A.
ftp> cd etext
250 CWD command successful.  
ftp> get PG000.TXT
200 PORT command successful.  
150 ASCII data connection for PG000.TXT (128.174.68.206,3134) (2881 bytes).  
226 ASCII Transfer complete.  
local: PG000.TXT remote: PG000.TXT
2939 bytes received in 0.066 seconds (43 Kbytes/s)  
ftp> bye  
221 Goodbye.  
$ cat PG000.TXT

<...300 bps text scrolls by, as HarryT reads it at a real-time 300 bps rate...>

[Geralt]

Originally Posted by patrickt

Audio books are outstanding for those who can't read but that means you're using tablets or cell phones and not ereaders to have books read to you.

Not true. I use MP3 player (Sansa Clip Zip).
And I can read perfectly well, ebooks or pbooks. I "read" audiobooks because they are completely different experience and I like how they make me feel. I often find they create a completely different kind of atmosphere and with a good narrator they can enhance my experience of a book, believe it or not.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by twowheels

30 years? 30 years ago you could read the text faster than it would download!

That's exactly why the late 1980s 80s were the heyday of companies selling Project Gutenberg CDs, because large-scale downloading was so painful.

[LadyKate]

Originally Posted by patrickt

A. I live in Oaxaca, Mexico, and prefer to read in English. So, for twelve years I read what I could find. It wasn't totally hopeless but sometimes it got a bit grim. With my Kindle I can read what I want to read.

B. I used to read series but have abandoned most of them. I got fed up with Mathew Scudders alcoholism and AA fundamentalism. I got tired of hearing about Kay Scarpetta's lesbian niece who was the FBI agent. And Inspector Ian Banks' love life is a bore.

C. I agree with a previous poster. When I bought paper books and lugged them home I tended to read them. Now, if a book a bad I'll dump it. My record was a book that started with five pages of detailed torture and when it shifted to the gang rape of the tortured woman I dumped it. I think I was on page six.

D. FWIW, when I was working my reading was 98% non-fiction and was work-related. Once I quite working I flipped and now my reading is 95% fiction.

E. I know it's just a business but I appreciate Amazon making the first Kindle, pursuing the market when it was almost non-existent, and being a source of books for me to read. Thanks, folks.

About your comment point C - That is a short enough "dump" length that a sample would have indicated the book was not for you.

[patrickt]

Originally Posted by Geralt

Not true. I use MP3 player (Sansa Clip Zip).
And I can read perfectly well, ebooks or pbooks. I "read" audiobooks because they are completely different experience and I like how they make me feel. I often find they create a completely different kind of atmosphere and with a good narrator they can enhance my experience of a book, believe it or not.

Sorry, but you don't "read" audiobooks even if you put the word in quotation marks. You listen to audiobooks that someone else is reading to you. My mother used to read to me. I know what you mean, though. I've never read "To Kill a Mockingbird" but I saw the movie starring Gregroy Peck. So, I "read" the book on the movie screen.

I enjoy reading. Some don't. That's perfectly legitimate but listening or watching isn't reading.

[Geralt]

Originally Posted by patrickt

Sorry, but you don't "read" audiobooks even if you put the word in quotation marks. You listen to audiobooks that someone else is reading to you. My mother used to read to me. I know what you mean, though. I've never read "To Kill a Mockingbird" but I saw the movie starring Gregroy Peck. So, I "read" the book on the movie screen.

I enjoy reading. Some don't. That's perfectly legitimate but listening or watching isn't reading.

A movie is not a book.
An audiobook is a book. If unabridged (which is ALWAYS my choice), an audibook has the exact same content as a pbook and ebook.

You cant say you have "read" a book if you saw the movie, simply because the movie is not a book. But one can say they have "read" an audiobook because audiobooks are books! They are not frickin' movies.

Most if not all of the people on mobileread enjoy reading, so I don't know what your point is. Watching a movie is certainly not equal to reading a book. But listening an audiobook is certainly equal to reading it, in terms of the actual content of the book.

[LadyKate]

Originally Posted by patrickt

Audio books are outstanding for those who can't read but that means you're using tablets or cell phones and not ereaders to have books read to you.

Lol... It isn't about the reader, it's about the format and I did not think of audiobooks as I don't drive these days so don't use them (when I tried using audiobooks I found that if I wasn't playing a boring game I tended to get into whatever my eyes and hands were doing rather than following the book).

I myself have never owned an ereader. My first devices were iPaqs (I went through many of these as I bought them second hand and used them for hours each day) and I moved to tablets.