Monday, June 07, 2004

Turning over a new leaf?

I haven't read a book in a while. This is not to say that I haven't been reading - just that I've been doing it with electronic books (aka ebooks). I was thinking about this the other evening as I luxuriated in a steaming hot bath, perusing the latest edition of "The Readers Digest". As I leafed through the pages, being careful not to get them wet (my partner has only recently recovered the previous issue which had drowned and then plunged unceremoniously down the wall side of the bath - making it extremely difficult to recover! But I digress ...) I wondered if people feel more of a sense of completion when reading a paper book - knowing they are half way through, or closer to the end. You don't really get this with an ebook. Sure you can see from the scroll bar how far you've come, and how far there's still to go, but there is nothing as satisfying at the end as closing the back cover and putting it down. Done. Complete. Finished. With an ebook you might delete it, or save it onto a memory card for later reference, but you don't pop it onto the bookshelf as a book you've read. And they're certainly not easy to share around! But you can read them in the dark, and they're very light to pack!

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