the Kindle is to books what paying to watch a movie in streaming format on the internet is to film.
Jmark on another blog notes:
"I’ve owned a Kindle reader (first generation) since the first month it came out. Initially, I was enthusiastic and used it constantly. Now, I only use it when I am reading a very large book that I would rather not lug around in my workbag (I’m reading U.S. Grant’s “Memoirs” and Boswell’s “Life of Johnson”).
I much prefer reading something in book form (I would never think of reading the triumvirate of great Stoic classics (and my favorite books), Marcus Aurelius’ meditations, Epictetus, and Seneca’s essays, on a Kindle: my notes and underlinings are too important to me.
I also cannot imagine being without these books during some interruption in electricity (I live in Florida and hurricanes have knocked out my electric for weeks on end).
It’s taken time to come to this conclusion, but I think that the Kindle is good only for ephemeral reading: the daily paper, a light novel, a mystery.
Something valuable that requires study and mental application to fully appreciate? No way.
The experience of making a book a personal possession (with markings, notes, etc.,) is missing with the Kindle experience.
I own the Kindle; I do not own the books it carries in digital format in any palpable sense. One button click and –whooosh—they are gone. No Kindle book can be handed on to the next generation; they exist only in Amazon’s server.
I think this gadget is useful for some things but that it is inadequate for others.
An analogy: the Kindle is to books what paying to watch a movie in streaming format on the internet is to film.
When I find a film I love, I will want a copy on DVD. With the Kindle, there is a sense that I am only renting or borrowing a book. Yes, I know that I could download it again from Amazon if my Kindle were to break, but these are books that I can never display in my home, stack on the shelves in my library, etc."
"I’ve owned a Kindle reader (first generation) since the first month it came out. Initially, I was enthusiastic and used it constantly. Now, I only use it when I am reading a very large book that I would rather not lug around in my workbag (I’m reading U.S. Grant’s “Memoirs” and Boswell’s “Life of Johnson”).
I much prefer reading something in book form (I would never think of reading the triumvirate of great Stoic classics (and my favorite books), Marcus Aurelius’ meditations, Epictetus, and Seneca’s essays, on a Kindle: my notes and underlinings are too important to me.
I also cannot imagine being without these books during some interruption in electricity (I live in Florida and hurricanes have knocked out my electric for weeks on end).
It’s taken time to come to this conclusion, but I think that the Kindle is good only for ephemeral reading: the daily paper, a light novel, a mystery.
Something valuable that requires study and mental application to fully appreciate? No way.
The experience of making a book a personal possession (with markings, notes, etc.,) is missing with the Kindle experience.
I own the Kindle; I do not own the books it carries in digital format in any palpable sense. One button click and –whooosh—they are gone. No Kindle book can be handed on to the next generation; they exist only in Amazon’s server.
I think this gadget is useful for some things but that it is inadequate for others.
An analogy: the Kindle is to books what paying to watch a movie in streaming format on the internet is to film.
When I find a film I love, I will want a copy on DVD. With the Kindle, there is a sense that I am only renting or borrowing a book. Yes, I know that I could download it again from Amazon if my Kindle were to break, but these are books that I can never display in my home, stack on the shelves in my library, etc."
posted by dan at 9:30 PM
1 Comments:
Excellent thoughts. Several of my books I have read multiple times have page numbers written all over the inside front cover, reminding me of where I left the most notes, underlinings or highlightings.
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