E-reading isn’t reading.......
Interesting article in Slate.
Out of Touch
E-reading isn’t reading.
Slate.com
By Andrew Piper Thursday, Nov. 15, 2012
Buttons also resist. Over time, their use causes stress to the human body, known as carpal tunnel syndrome. Like its related postural malady, “text neck,” these syndromes are signs of how computation is beginning to stretch us, both cognitively and corporally. The resistance of the button is an intimation of the way technology increasingly seems to be pushing back.
Perhaps it is for this reason that we are moving away from the world of the button to that of the touch screen. From the ugly three-dimensionality of the mechanical apparatus we ascend to the fantasy of existing in only two dimensions, a world of the single, yet infinite page. Here the finger no longer converts, but conducts. With capacitive touch screens your finger alters the screen’s electrostatic field thereby conveying a command. Instead of pressing to turn the page, we now swipe. Kinesthesia, the sense of bodily movement, overrides the book’s synesthesia, its unique art of conjoining touch, sight, and thought into a unified experience. In an electronic environment, corporal action overtakes reading’s traditional inaction.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/11/reading_on_a_kindle_is_not_the_same_as_reading_a_book.single.html
I have to admit that I much prefer reading a book than I do reading on my Kindle. I like my Kindle for travel but at home I much prefer a book. A book is comforting.
What about you guys?
= new reply since forum marked as read
but if power is out for more than the two weeks my nook lives, I've got a lot more problems than reading...I sleep with a CPAP.
The rest depends on comfort level with technology.
If you are comfortable, then sharing a book is not hard. Calibre, free and open-source for those who care about such things, converts the formats readily, including out-dated ones from obsolescent readers. It does require learning the program, which is admittedly more work than handing a book to someone, but on the other hand, I can now send books as email attachments (they are rarely more than 250K) to my family in Germany, which is harder with a physical volume. Earlier this year I was reading through a series of books that was only available in an old Palm-Pilot format, and just converted it through drag and drop into the epub format my nook wants without having to tell Calibre anything--it knows nooks and pretty much any other reader and what formats they prefer. And even if not, then it's a right click to tell it which format to change to.
If you're going to remove DRM from purchased books, as easy as dragging and dropping the file onto your Calibre screen if you have the plugins installed, you'll need to decide where your ethical boundaries lies with respect to lending them. Since eBooks are still priced pretty closely to physical books, certainly for newer releases, I have no qualms about lending them to individuals. I certainly wouldn't put them out to the torrent-verse though. And sources like Project Gutenberg, or the University of Virginia, or University of Adelaide which house large eBook collections will certainly keep up on the various formats.
I'm not saying that eBooks are the way to go for everyone--as I mentioned above, I consume large quantities of ink on paper books--just that there are no particular reasons not to include them in a balanced reading diet. You may choose not to include it, but that's simply a personal preference, not a drawback of the platform.
Of course, you can only lend books to folks with an eReader or computer, whereas a physical book can go to anyone. Still, for me, I spend maybe half a dozen hours with a book, give or take, and for 99%, never re-read and for most don't lend, either because they were from the library in the first place or my friends and relations read other things. My wife and I share some tastes, so maybe 20% get shared with her. If I become an evangelist for a book (_Peace Is Every Step_ by Thich Nhat Hahn and _Hook and Jill_ by Andrea Jones), I buy the physical book many times over as a less avoidable reminder for those around me 
Physical definitely rules there.
But given my lack of re-reading, what I'm interested in is a one time transfer from the author's brain of story and language into my brain. I'm no more interested whether HOW it gets there is ink on paper or bytes on a screen than I am in whether the author wrote it out long-hand, dictated it, or used a computer.
Little extra present from Amazon and Barnes & Noble that attempts to keep the books from being opened on a device they don't know about. Similar to copy protection on movies and stuff like that. I have no qualms about removing it for myself since I purchased them in the first place. It's one of the places that there will continue to be strife between the big retailers and users until pricing structure changes. If they priced the books much lower, but paid the authors up front and called it a rental instead of a purchase? Anyway, I'm sure it will shake out over time.
These days I buy many more books new (physical or online) than I used to. I go to cons (as I know you do, too) and readings and such and have gotten to know and like the authors of what I read as people instead of names, so if I can I try to buy in a format that will give them income, so on-line stores or new book stores instead of used book stores and libraries. The latter two get visited often enough anyway, but I like to at least take a moment to think about whether I can afford this week to help keep a writer working a bit more directly.
Plus, it's hard to get a nook signed, and tacky to get a library book signed
Physical, nook, and unabridged audio. I'm not as prolific a reader as some here, but it still makes about 50 of each a year.
I buy physical books for a) authors to sign; b) to support a local indy bookstore; c) for tech books--never try to read a code listing in an e-reader; or d) out of habit.
I buy e-Books a) to quickly get the next book in the series; b) to support authorial friends who are only doing e-Book publishing; or c) out of ease.
I use the library for both types. In addition to the library, there are lots and lots of sources on-line for free books, starting with Project Gutenberg and working out from there. Anytime I'm looking for something pre-1930, that's my first stop.
I have one of the nook glow model that can be side-lit if you wish--before that I had one of the original nooks. The e-ink screens for nook or Kindle (I'm talking about the non-color, non-backlit versions) are to my eyes superior to ink on paper now, with the added plus that at the end of the day I can pop the size up a bit. I know the newer paperback form factor (you know, the bit taller, bit skinnier) allows for more white space on the pager for baby-boomer eye-ease, but sometime's it's still too damn small. The glow I only use occasionally--my wife sleeps easily with my bedside light on. On the other hand, I'm more restless, so she reads hers in the dark more. My non-backlit one goes for a couple weeks easily between charges. She has a nook tablet and thus, backlit, it needs much more regular charging.
Ironically, since one of the guy's points was worrying about carpal tunnel (or was that a comment), I got my wife her nook because of carpal tunnel. She could no longer comfortably hold a physical book for extended periods of time. It's a lot easier to shift a nook around. It's been an absolute godsend for her--someone who had always read several books a week that had pretty much stopped.
I also went and rooted my nook, so in addition to the B&N software, I run Kindle for Android and Overdrive for Android, so I can buy epubs (nook) or mobi (Amazon) or download directly from the library (Overdrive) without needing to use Adobe Digital Editions or Calibre to transfer the book to the reader. (Yes, I love Calibre for lots of things, but it's nice, too, to be able to download directly when I'm not near my laptop.)
The biggest drawback for me with e-Books is direct access to locations, otherwise known as "flipping through the book." E-Books can only take you to a specific page (nook), percentage read (kindle), or bookmark that you were prescient enough to set ahead of time knowing you'd be looking for the spot later (both, but NEVER happens for me )
It's true that you don't know how far you are or how far you have to go by feel, but a screen tap will show you a progress bar. Sharing depends entirely on the source of the book. It also depends on with whom. For DRM-free files, it's easy to share for anyone. For our family, the nooks are hooked up to one B&N account, so anything there for one is available for all. My smartphone has nook and kindle installed, too, and location is kept in sync between the devices. That's for reading emergencies, though.
All of that said, our house is still overflowing with books v1.0 and we never, ever have had enough bookshelves and don't have the creativity to build easy chairs out of them...
and reading some older titles that aren't on Kindle.
But some titles, like Alice in Wonderland or Huckleberry Finn, are perfect for e-reading. You can have a pretty hard copy for the bookshelf and read the free e-version anywhere you can take your Kindle.
with a technology mix around for the nook. Came out certainly for the nook tablet about a year and a half ago, maybe for the nook color before that. But it was meant more as enhancement than core to the story, I think. It was marketed particularly at grandparents for sharing books with the grandkids--it allows for someone to record the story in sync with the pages so that the kid can look and listen to the book later on.
Not being around children of such an age any more (or again), we pretty much ignored that aspect of it. I like the idea of it, though. When raising the kids, we not only read aloud at bedtime until they were in middle school, but I recorded many cassette tapes of their favorite stories for after the lights got turned off.
Shockingly, all three are committed audio book listeners as adults
If you have it in your Kindle library, you can put it on your smart phone - even better, you can expand the text to make it larger - the words wrap and the length expands or contracts, depending upon what size text you are using.
I think I am going to marry my smart phone. 
I rooted my nook and installed the Kindle for Android app on it. I also have FB Reader which is a bit clunkier than either but can pull books directly out of my Calibre library (or Project Gutenberg or other OPDS libraries on the net) directly without having to cable it to the computer at all.
I also put nook, Kindle and Moon+Reader on my smart phone. A nice thing with both the nook and Kindle reader software is that for books in your Amazon or BN libraries, they will stay synced between devices--so if you were stuck and were reading on your phone, when you next go to the book on your reader, it will go to where you left off.
Reading on my phone is pretty emergency, though, even though it's not too bad. I usually have a physical book or my nook with me. But, MY GOD WHAT IF THE ELEVATOR STOPPED AND I DIDN'T HAVE EITHER OF THOSE! Then I'm good with my phone
I absolutely agree that using an e-reader would be a foolish choice to do much looking at Life (we were a Life family, not a Look family), I haven't looked at, or wanted to look at a Life Magazine since I was growing up. Didn't then very much, either--too many pictures, not enough words.
I don't see that as any more of a downside than the more or less equivalent: Physical books are at best a mediocre format for presentation of technical documentation. Hypertext and other forms a far more usable and effective.
My comment about lack of downside was about using (e-book|physical book|audio book) "if it fits the way you use books."
Since I don't, in general, read anything where detailed pictures or images are important--90% fiction, 10% history/science non-fiction, no non-work related magazines--there is no downside to an e-reader. Obviously if the bulk of someone's reading mix does require detailed pictures and images, it wouldn't be a fit for them. If something isn't a good fit for the e-reader, I just get a hold of a physical copy and use it. In real life, I just read the most convenient version-e- or physical.
I certainly could be wrong, at least that's what my wife claims, but I suspect that the bulk of most reading for folks that read a lot is fiction or other text-heavy books that work perfectly well either way. You pays your money and you takes your choice. Or, checks out your choice from the library. Or something.
So that's where I was going with the "No downside." There is truly nothing other than personal preference involved for most reading.
(As an aside, I don't know if you were looking at the Life archives on Google Books or another one. On GB there is a side by side option for the pages that allows viewing full spreads. On my main display at work, anyway, the screen is pretty close to the size of an old open Life. Can't quite get it to fill a full screen because it still wants navigation on the screen, but it could be worse. Was just poking around randomly to try things out and stumbled across four very pretty watercolors painted by A. Hitler in the 11.30.1936 issue. Made me wonder what folks where thinking about the politics in Germany while reading Life in middle America. Maybe I should read more Life if it makes me think! )
