Sunday December 20, 2009 at 19:05
Subject: My musings on E-Books.
Keywords:
ebook, reading
Posted by: Sean Reifschneider
Related entries:Musings on eBooks by Kevin Fenzi, Sunday December 20, 2009 at 16:23
I've also done a fair bit of e-book reading recently. Read below for
my thoughts on the Kindle (which I don't have), Gutenberg, and more...
About a year ago I got a Kindle. I liked the idea of having a small
device that would allow me to do some of my random reading without having a
big heavy book to man-handle (at night I often read laying down with the
book held above me), and that would do more electronic reading (I'm in the
habit of reading the top slashdot page over lunch).
In the end, I took advantage of Amazon's great return policy. Note
this was the original Kindle, not the newer version... Obviously, I found
it fairly lacking. The screen was great, but I found it harder to hold
than a book (the leather case didn't hold it very firmly, I dropped it on
my face several times), and without the case it's hard to hold without
changing the page. Page changes took a couple of seconds, and it was
possible to change pages 5 at a time, so it often took quite a while to
find out where I was.
There was a slashdot subscription you could buy that would download it
via the built in cellular wireless, but I realized that I don't read
slashdot like paper. About 10% of the time I right-click a story link to
read the page that it's about, and another 5 or 10% of the time I will read
the slashdot comments. Reading it on the Kindle was like printing it out
and reading it, and just didn't work for me.
I usually do entertainment reading late at night, before I go to bed.
If I'm reading paper (or a Kindle), I need a light on, and that disturbs
Evelyn. So I decided to start reading the classics available from Project
Gutenberg, on my laptop -- which has it's own light source and it's
concentrated enough that it doesn't bother Evelyn.
There's a lot of good stuff out there on Project Gutenberg. So far
I've read Around The World In 80 Days, Great
Expectations, and several Sherlock Holmes books. I've also read some
Cory Doctrow books like Little Brother (I read that on the
Kindle).
All of these sources are very nice -- they don't have DRM and so I can
just read them on anything I want.
Unfortunately, my favorite modern authors are not available to me
without going to some sort of a secure reader. With tons of great stuff to
read on the web and Project Gutenberg, I'm just passing on a lot of things
I would otherwise be reading. I really have enjoyed Charles Stross and
Neal Stephenson, but I'm not even that interested to re-read (or in some
cases do initial reads of their stuff that Evelyn has bought) in paper
format.
I know I'm being pretty picky, but Project Gutenberg and the web in
general has really spoiled me. :-) I know some people really dislike
reading on computers, but I've been quite enjoying it.
(Post Reply)
(Post Reply)