ebooks, eReading
eReading is reading but then…
February 16, 2009
Reading and eReading are the same. But then… I have second thoughts. I suppose what I was thinking of was that eReading can be as absorbing and imaginative as conventional reading, yet there are advantages to eReading. Often, we think in reverse, about what is lost or diminished by a mechanical device. Yet I don’t want one or the other, but both. I’ve been regularly reading both ways for well over a decade, like everybody else, or at least so many people now.
I can flip things off the net, into a reader, and take it with me for snatches, long or short, when I can. Having hundreds of books and articles with me at all times has advantages. Depending on the inspiration of the moment, there’s always something to read, something I *want* to read, not a soiled, wornout magazine at the doctor’s office, a newspaper at the restaurant that has been handled by dozens of people that day, over their eggs and toast, french fries, and other greasy fare, coughing all over it. I find I actually can read that marginal article, which I wouldn’t have otherwise read, life being too busy since it’s a little lower on my list of priorities or interests. It’s easy to copy and paste it into my eReader to get around to maybe weeks or sometimes months later.
I can’t carry around hundreds of physical books, but I can carry around hundreds of books on my Palm or Sony Reader (PRS-505), anywhere I go.
And then the experience of ereading, I still believe, being tugged in both directions, isn’t quite the same. It can even seem better; right with the right book. The qualitative experience of reading an ebook is as deep and engaging as a printed volume.
