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Comment by chromalife | Hacker News Reader

I prefer having a physical book. Flicking through pages to reread sections, highlighting and margin notes are not yet seamless with the reading app I'm using.

But Getting a tablet has increased the amount I'm reading by at least a factor of 4. It is now so easy to buy books after reading a recommendation online. The free sample feature makes it so I don't buy a book I won't like, And the built in dictionary has me looking up new words without pausing my reading flow.

Physical is great but I don't think I'll ever go back for reading fiction. Having said all that my kids will be getting physical books. The distractions in electronic devices is something I'm still struggling with.

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> Having said all that my kids will be getting physical books. The distractions in electronic devices is something I'm still struggling

Having four kids myself, I would never have tried to start them reading on a device. Kids don't start reading novels or textbooks, they have books that are physically interactive in a way that doesn't translate very well to a screen. Starting out, children learn by touch and taste as much as with ears or eyes.

Even at ages four to six, many kids need a physical or tactile element to help them learn. My youngest used to love turning the pages back and forth to talk about the differences in the characters of Dr Seuss books like Go Dog Go. The physical interaction of turning a page to demonstrate progression of time in a story is something that doesn't seem to translate as well when swiping or tapping in a tablet.

Dude. P.D Eastman.

There is something interesting happening with the kids these days, They are being handed over tablet devices as soon as possible. My concern rises from the hand movements which is in a swipe , How Does this restriction of movement in the formative years affect the child in the later years?

I'm often reading in bed or on the sofa where highlighting would be a pain with a physical book - with my Kindle app it's so easy.

What's even better is how quickly I can access my highlighted notes. I often find I'm in a conversation with someone and say, "hey there's a great quote on the topic we are discussing from book I read years ago - let me show it to you".

I just wish the "Your Highlights" interface online was faster and better designed. It just feels like they did it to placate users but didn't put a lot of care or effort into making it feel like a great experience.

A few times I've wanted to make a script to download all those highlights into a text file, but I've never bothered... would still be really nice though.

It's funny because I'm the exact opposite. I have to have paper books for my pleasure reading, but most of my technical or higher brow books I keep digital since it's massively cheaper and easier to search/bookmark/leave notes/etc.

What software/hardware are you using ?

Yes, we read more now that tablets are here, but at least in my experience, we kind of also ´cheat´, skipping pages (are there even pages anymore?) and glancing ahead... in my more physical book reading times i felt skipping pages was a betrayal of the author´s intentions, now i am just in a hurry and really want only to know how it ends and if all the knots are tied. And we can do this beacause electronic books have put A LOT of lesser readings in our hands, books we never would have bought or even read in our physical book reading times. It´s just like buying a 1 dollar app: you play with it for a few days, then forget about it.

If you really think about it, that´s NOT reading.

We all should go visit https://www.gutenberg.org/ and start reading on a tablet, you know, real books.

I skipped ahead way more often in print because skipping ahead in an ebook is a hassle.

> And the built in dictionary has me looking up new words without pausing my reading flow.

I speak Japanese as a second language and the dictionary is absolutely amazing for someone like me trying to read a Japanese book.

For me it is opposite - strongly prefer reading on phone and strongly prefer buying books in physical store. I dislike that I am supposed to buy e-books based on much smaller information.

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