Comment by sw104 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sw104 | Hacker News Reader

I know many people dislike them, but reading has become so much better for me since buying a Kindle and digitising most of my library. I used to be a bookshelf person, but live in a very small space and needed to transfer that space for things from other hobbies.

I still keep 10 or so of my favourite books in print form, and admittedly they do act as decoration more than anything (I have read them), and occasionally buy a print book when no digital format is available.

I know I can't resell the digital books, I can't transfer ownership of them, and they may (unlikely) be censored or removed from my device. I still don't care.

It's so convenient. Travelling with 1 thin Kindle in hand luggage as opposed to 3/4 brick books in my suitcase, the immediate page turns breaking the read less, the backlight for darker situations, the ability to get it in a thin pocket and get it out and read wherever I need to kill a few minutes.

The complementary phone app is also really useful when I don't have the e-reader on hand. I've been doubling my phone up at the gym as a workout logger when lifting and book when using cardio machines like the static bike.

The issue I've always had with books is the idea that when I buy one, I think I'm buying the time to read the book as well. When I go to book store and see dozens of interesting books, I often forget the weeks it will take to read them all. I get through 1/2 books a week and there's a mountain of stuff I want to read. Little optimisations in getting more time to read really help with that.

Yeah for some people e-readers are great. For others they ruin the experience of reading.

I have an e-reader because there are some out of print books, particularly related to stage magic, that I can only find in digital form. But I despise reading on the thing. As much as "e-ink" is a better experience than reading on a computer screen, it still doesn't quite match the aesthetic and "ergonomic" qualities of reading ink on paper for me. The smell is missing. The joy of turning the pages is missing and if I'm dealing with a particularly large or graphic-heavy PDF then the performance problems remind me that I'm dealing with a piece of flawed modern technology that is still iterating towards perfection rather than the brilliant simplicity of a tool that has "just worked" near-perfectly for hundreds of years (with obvious caveats related to long-term storage and preservation).

But I also don't travel much, I'm a home owner and I work from home so I don't have the majority of the problems that e-readers are good at solving.

If I were moving a lot, had to commute for an hour or two each day or lived in a small condo then my book collection would be impractical and an e-reader would begin to look a lot different to me.

Just use something like Calibre to back them up and break the DRM on them (for the ones you can). I've had Amazon remove a few titles that I couldn't down load later because of publisher disputes, and there have been many instances of them updating books for modern audiences that brought unwanted changes. The downside to always connected digital media - it can be ephemeral. In that regard books are far superior.

or get a kobo

100% but the actual reading on a physical book is better, right?

My ideal situation would just to lend my 300 books to a library that ships anywhere in the world when I finally want to read, and then take it back when I'm done. Or a PDF...

But now they are all here, and I rather have the space instead of the books...

> 100% but the actual reading on a physical book is better, right?

YMMV but I don't see any difference at all.

If anything the form factor of the e-reader makes reading more comfortable. I'm not having to hold the book in a certain way to hold the pages open. It's always lighter, which is a big advantage for reading large books. It's also a bit smoother/faster because page turns are instantaneous and using the holding hand. And I can read under light rain without worrying about the book disintegrating.

The e-ink display is akin to paper for my eyes, and more comfortable to read at night with it's reddish backlight as opposed to a physical book with a nearby lamp.

On a side note, I do quite like the built-in dictionary/Wikipedia extract feature in Kindles. For some books (eg. Russian classics) it's quite useful. There's also a feature which based on a slider annotates individual words (slider dictates the complexity of words to annotate from some to many) in-line in the book, which I can see as being of enormous benefit to a new or young reader.

I do still enjoy going to physical book stores and browsing the covers, blurbs and first chapters. On the other hand, when I'm reading about a book online it's nice to be able to buy it and instantly start reading.

No? I can overwrite IMO poor publisher font/margin/spacing choices. I can read a one thousand page book and it's the same consistent ~250g weight.

Paper books have a bit better typesetting and for reference books/textbooks they still have the edge but for linear fiction/non-fiction? Give me the ebook every time.

Alternatively, tablets with the Kindle app work quite nicely for textbooks.

I replaced physical textbooks with an iPad with the Kindle app on it, since whether it's an iPad or textbook it's something that stays at home. It works really well, especially side by side with Goodnotes for studying.

Kindle Print replicas can be okay but they are basically just PDFs. It's still faster to flick through a book than a PDF. If a non-print replica Kindle textbook has equations it's generally done with images and looks really bad, makes the book really big in size and slow to navigate, the equations can't reflow and so are usually noticeably different in size at every font level.

The thing is, once you part with your books you realise you don't care about them.

A better idea is a book trading platform where you offer your books for points and then use the points to trade for new books.

For me, reading on a Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 inch screen with 2560x1600 is an upgrade to paper.

I think the words are actually sharper but most of all the lighting is always absolutely perfect. The size is perfect.

Even beyond that though, my absolute favorite is an audio book read by Robertson Dean. Hopefully someday soon we can have AI Robertson Dean read any book.

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