From books to e-books
29 Jan 2017I don’t remember distinctly when I got in love to reading books but this goes back to early age. It was self induced somehow. With time, the kind of books I read changed drastically which is expected. As a book lover, there is one constant challenge I faced - becoming more of a book collector than reader. There are increasing number of books that I have on book shelf which are unread. This causes not only an internal distress but also becomes one of the many reasons of complaints my wife has. She always imagines how this space, devoted to almost three books shelves, could be better utilized by other stuff (I don’t understand how would that be “better” though!). As you guess, she is not into reading that much.
Well, this post is about a transformation that I see. I purchased a kindle (the older small one, without touch) I think in year 2012-13. Even before that, being a programmer I spend more of my time on a laptop or desktop and would read e-books in the form of PDF or EPUB on the system. Kindle was received by family (especially, wife) with joy since I would purchase less of physical books (paperback, hardcover) and atleast going forward, there won’t be more space needed by those little things.
But after a small period of romanticism with kindle (purchasing few books, flaunting how easy it is on eyes as compared to reading a PDF on laptop, talking technicals like glare etc.), I felt something missing. The joy of reading was not really the same holding an electronic device and pressing buttons to go forth and back as with a book - unnatural - isn’t it? So, the kindle got placed on the same bookshelf meant for books and started gathering dust while I switched to books again. I also realized that this feeling was not unique to me - many friends would share similar thoughts on social media. So atleast the guilt of spending money and not using something was mitigated - there were others in the same situation like me and they too took similar decision.
Last year, I relocated to Jakarta. This meant I would not be able to get access to huge “unread” collection of books back home. I’d to resort to ebooks. By this time (early 2016), there were much better kindle apps with lot of features on Android and Mac. For this one year I read many books on kindle on Mac and I feel that I am already making that transition. Following are a couple of points which I like about kindle books as compared to physical counterparts:
| Digital book (e.g. on Kindle Reader) | Physical book | |
|---|---|---|
| Fulfillment | delivered instantly after purchase | can take anytime from 2-3 days to weeks sometimes |
| Storage space | stored on device. can store thousands (and more) of books per the device memory | needs physical space |
| Carry while travel or during relocation | only space and weight is that of device | each book takes space and adds to weight |
| Highlights | highlight electronically, also know how many others have highlighted, see all highlights together etc. | highlight using marker or pencil, harder to go through highlights later |
| Translate meaning | check meanings of certain words and phrase online immediately (just select the word)* | hmm, keep a dictionary alongside (and switch context) |
| Distractions | possible to distract to internet, social media since you’re on the device | focus is better in this case |
| Feel | smell of pages of a new book, cozy feeling of turning pages of a physical book |
So other than the last two points, I think there are many benefits of switching to a digital book on a good reader.
*This becomes particularly important since I come from India and English is not my first language. Additionally, I’m particularly weaker on Vocabulary. Handy access to exact detailed meaning of a word makes me understand the stuff more clearly and also helps building a better vocabulary.