On Sun, 2014-01-05 at 20:26 -0800, Mahesh Murthy wrote: > As a sideways punt on the topic, has anyone noticed how quickly Google > Play > Books has become a real contender to Kindle? > > Books here are almost always cheaper (often 50% or more) than on > Amazon > Kindle, and the Google magazine newsstand has begun to rock.
The point someone made about space available for regular books is valid. But disk space only encourages electronic collections of trash. None of my (or anyone else's) whines about e-books is going to make them go away, but they are, IMO, changing the way people handle reading material. Less than a decade ago, my brother and sister in law, both prolific readers, would have books lying about that someone else could simply pick up and flip through and get a sense of what was in there. Now they sit with their noses stuck to an electronic screen and any interesting thing being read can only be discussed, if at all. No question of "flipping through" - an impossibility with e books. Both people are now more detached from their surroundings and people around them - with their precious i-this and i-that which cannot safely be left in a toilet or perched precariously on the corner of a full dining table. No one lends e books to others. Like an idly, or a sandwich, you get your own. Its about me and what's mine. Has anyone ever comprehensively reviewed an e book? Someone must have done that. I have reviewed a few (paper) books related to the military and aviation. I find it necessary to make a pen/pencil mark on a page, sentence or paragraph and then go back (or forward) to a blank page and note the page number with a remark or reminder. When I read a book for review - I end up with at least a 100 or 150 remarks+annotations that fill up all the bank/white space at the beginning or end of a book. These remarks serve as a guide for me to either review the book - or reminders of important points that may come up later if I am writing something. I can sometimes keep 2 or 3 separate books by my side and consult the annotations I have made in all 3 books if they are related to the subject I am writing about. This would be an impossible feat using an electronic book reader. That apart, I sometimes remember something I read in a book as a paragraph that was in the top left corner about 1/3rd of the way into the book. This sort of interaction between mental memory and muscle memory is useful to find information when one is doing some serious reading and has failed to annotate (or cannot annotate as the book belongs to someone else or a library). This is again an impossibility with an e book. Of course a word search is possible - but for that one has to remember key words. Napster, which was discussed at length on Silk, was generally hailed as a great achievement that broke the back of greedy recording companies. But sound copyright owners have fought back. Books were primarily shared resources, and resources that would last a century or more with ease. That is being killed by e books. It is more of a loss than a gain, IMO. shiv
