He Said:
With Kindles, Kobos and the slew of new tablets hitting the market, pending various legal actions taken by Apple, these devices really are the future of reading.
Having said that, I am not on board yet and am still unwilling to part with my textile books. The printing press was one of the greatest and most important inventions of of all time, but it is quickly becoming obsolete whether I like it or not.
Novels, magazines and newspapers will one day be almost nonexistent in print form, but with the rise of the tablet readers, this prospect isn't quite so troublesome as it was when the only solution for a no-print world was to simply be plastered on the Internet without any pagination. When a story is paginated on a page with advertising, the only thing that keeps newspapers and magazines afloat, enough money can come in to make sure the product quality doesn't sink. Moving from a web page to a laid out package displayed on an e-reader, the advertising dollars can still flow in.
While I read newspapers online, I still love to read books with my hands turning pages and I have no interest in changing right now. I will wait until I absolutely have to. That day is much farther away for books than it is newspapers, even though newspapers have been much slower to catch on to the trend.
I tried to make the jump to audio books because an aunt of mine thought they were all the rage and swore by them. I couldn't focus. It was background noise until it said "Chapter Two," and then I thought, "What happened in Chapter One?" I listened to that first chapter three times before I had any idea of what happened, and I was frustrated because I didn't even have the book handy to fling across the room. I picked up a hard copy shortly thereafter, so I'm a little skeptical about things that mess with my reading habits.
I remember my profs in college talking about how newspapers aren't going anywhere, even though the print world was collapsing from all sides in an apocalyptic media meltdown at the time. They said there are people who still love to be able to feel it in their hands and just hold that ever-greying paper. Those people end with the Boomers. My generation is who the media world must cater to in the future, and we have no such attachments to holding inky paper.
The e-readers are the future, and the future is coming, but it isn't here yet.
She Said:
I read for fun. I just want you all to know. Reading is fantastic, and I'd sooner read a good book than watch TV. Anyway, we're talking about reading tablets and books. And you know, before I received a Kobo reading tablet for my birthday, I would have said that books reign supreme, and always will reign supreme.
Now I have a hard time leaving my Kobo alone for even 10 minutes. There are so many things I can read without ever having to step outside the comforts of my WiFi. It's so convenient! Crazy!
Not to say that books are dead. I still love books. I just also have made a new, special place in my heart for my Kobo.
Consider the convenience of a Kobo. It's teeny and light. It fits my school bag and doesn't weigh it down. I can have multiple books on there at once, assuming I like to read several books at one time. I can download previews for books, which gets rid of that awkward, semi-illegal book previewing I used to do in bookstores until employees chased me off. Books seem to be cheaper when bought on my Kobo. I can buy books I wouldn't buy at the bookstore for fear of the sales clerks judging me. Like those novels at the back of a Cosmo magazine. Definitely not an intellectual read. Also, and this might just be me, but how awful does paper feel when you touch it? Grosses me right out.
Books, however, are so permanent. I'd never buy a novel on a reading tablet that I wanted to keep. As cool as they are, someday technology is going to replace it with something newer and cooler. I hope to someday pass on my favourite books to my own family, so they can enjoy Harry and his crazy adventures as much as I have. I'm not going to e-mail them a .PDF. You don't read your kids a .PDF to help them fall asleep. Plus, you can't fill library shelves with digital books. I want to be able to go to a library and check out something physical, something I can hold. Library books covered in germs and with pages stuck together by greasy fingers. Wonderful.
As much as I love my Kobo, I know that books are never going to be replaced in my life. I'm still going to stuff my shelves with novels. There's a balance that can be met if one owns a reading tablet and novels and this is my greatest advice: if it's just for fun and you won't be heartbroken to lose it in the inevitable technology crash, buy it digitally. If you want to keep it forever and use it to fill the shelves of your in-home library, buy it in print.
