Recently I watched a short video clip of the author Joyce Carol Oates explain why the tactile sensation of holding an actual book and reading it is a far better experience than reading the same book on a small gizmo or computer screen (go to about 5 minutes in the clip). She made some of the same sort of arguments vinyl purists make about CD's (like, the artwork! Albums were works of art!). Over the years I've slowly gotten used to the e-book format. I've gone from, "This is an awful experience" to "I can learn to deal with this." For instance, I have a large collection of Logos books. These are on my home PC and laptop. Reading them is fine if I'm sitting in front of my PC or I have my laptop on a desk, but otherwise, they're cumbersome. I don't have a Kindle but I do have an IPad. The Logos app is still improving, but I can almost get comfortable sitting back and reading a book. Yes, I still have my records as well. I could care less if I break a CD case, but dropping an album, why that's dropping a work of art. And, of course, dropping the IPad... I don't want to do that either.
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I can relate to this. I don't have any Kindle or I-Pad type gysmos yet; but I do have an Apple MacBook Pro Lap Top and I like being about to access books and pdfs on the internet and make the print big, etc. But for some reason, I get tired of trying to follow long documents like that - I usually need to print them out and be able to look quickly over all the pages first a few times to the end; then go back and read slowly. Books and papers are easier to do that with.
I can see they are good for travel (books are heavy and bulky) and good novels, etc. but a book at a desk or good comfortable chair with good lighting - still seems better if not traveling, etc.
But, I don't know how to explain it though; but in books about theology, history, apologetics, bible stuff - it really helps to have a book to be able to go back and forth, jump to index, endnotes, previous pages, subsequent pages, etc. and see it all at one time. The electronic readers don't give me the same feeling of finding things fast like a book does.
But having several good novels on a I-Pad or Kindle is better (than taking different 5-10 books) when traveling on plane long distance; and while on a long trip.
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