Do either of these cartoon elicit a similar feeling from you?
from Pearls Before Swine
From The Awkward Yeti
Fun Fridays – July 31, 2015
The Steve Laube Agency
Helping to Change the World…Word by Word
The Steve Laube Agency
Helping to Change the World Word by Word
Name Brands in Fiction
That’s a laugh! And so true. Every time I recommend my e-reader to a hard copy book lover a belligerent debate ensues. They could never give up the warm feeling of the pages against theirs fingertips, the aroma of fresh paper wafting through their nostrils, blah, blah, blah.
Just eat the thing and get it over with. (Wink)
Steve, great cartoons.
And, yes, I can identify with both. I thought I would hate an e-reader. I love the feel of a “real” book. But now my shelves are filled with craft books, and I’m reading fiction on my Kindle. My stacks of novels were taking up too much space. And I like the back lighting on my Kindle for reading at night, so I don’t disturb my wife’s sleep.
So it’s “real” books for craft – for dog-eared pages, underlining , and highlighting – and e-books for fiction and late nights.
Love this – gave me a good laugh to start the day.
I don’t use an e-reader. Not at all. One of the reasons is that my wife has had a really hard time with her tablet, which has a Kindle app. If she doesn’t allow constant updates, and I mean at least every week, her library becomes unavailable.
The catch is that we live in a rural area with lousy wireless service (I am on dialup now), so to get her tablet updated, she has to go into town on Saturday and spend a couple of hours, sometimes, at McDonalds so it can stay connected through their WiFi.
Being now homebound, there’s no way I could work around that.
Does anyone else have this problem, or has the twenty-first century merely singled us out for this privileged inconvenience?
Love these, Steve. I have a lot of books on my iPad, and I’ll read those if I’m traveling, but at home, I still prefer a print book. I’m finding I get wrist problems from holding the heavy (although not very), thin reader. I wonder if others have this problem.
Ane, my mom finds a Kindle much easier to hold than a book. She also likes the ability to enlarge the font size.
I’m kind of like Steve. Some books need to be “real” so I can write in them and later flip back through them. But I like my Kindle for reading novels. It’s great to carry so many choices ith me everywhere I go.
Visual Editions is a publisher in Londan that makes books that must be physically read/enjoyed. I love their work.
London!! Not, Londan! Eep…typing on my phone…
That’s great! I keep telling my boys that someday they were going to wish they had left a paper trail. I like things I can hold in my hand and…like the cartoon encourages….does not need batteries! We’ve become so dependent. …remember the matrix!!!
Those were great!
Great cartoons, Steve.
I have an e-reader and I use it all the time, especially when I am travelling. Now I don’t need an extra suitcase for my Bible and other books. I also have a lot of trouble reading small print so the e-readers ability to enlarge the print is necessary for me.
With all that said, for me, any craft book has to be made from read paper. So, I can turn pages and flip through the book when I’m looking for something in particular.
With apologies to My Fair Lady: “Screens, screens, screens, I’m so sick of screens! I get screens all day through, first from him, now from you, is that all you blighters can dooooooooo!”
Screen-bashing hypocrite that I am, seeing as how we have a big screen TV. But I think the cultural omnipresence of screens is why I like books. Big screen TV at home, portable device screens we consult continually, now screens worn on our wrists, kids learning on screens at school and coming home to play on screens. We live in a world of digital wonders played out on screens… People go to amazing events and see them on a screen because they are recording the events.
Sigh. Of course, one could argue that a book is just a series of static screens… Is it the actuality of a book, as opposed to the digital presence, that we book-clingers appreciate? I love a bookshelf full of books the way I love a photo album (also an out-of-date item). With everything invisible in a thin slab, it feels just like taking one pill with all the necessary nutrients and never eating anything again. It’s efficient but so … non-sensual.
I like both Kindle and hardcopy. I like the feel of a book in my hands, and I don’t have to worry about setting it down in the sand, leaving it to cook in a hot car, or cracking the screen if I drop it. They do take up room, but I box in plastic so I can read the titles and store many in the garage. W.r.t. electronic books, it is nice to be able to have multiple copies of some books on my laptop, desktop, and e-reader. The two biggest problems with an e-reader are battery life (only about 10 hours for mine-not so good on a camping trip) and the unsuitability for bouncing back and forth between different locations in a nonfiction work. It’s hard to beat hardcopy with little strips of paper or post-it notes marking multiple locations. It is also harder to scan quickly to find something. There is no electronic equivalent of thumb-flipping through an entire book.
I have several translations and study guides on my Kindle, but I much prefer a hardcopy Bible for focusing on what God is trying to tell me and for ease of cross-referencing between locations as I read. There is also the serendipity of something catching my eye as I flip between targets. That unexpected stop is often what I was really needing to read at that moment.
Since I like both physical books and ereaders, I get a kick out of both and can identify with both positions. Very funny.
It also reminded me of a video I saw on Facebook. Granted, it’s an ad for Ikea, but I think what it says about the technology/physical book issue is funny and will resonate with a number of people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOXQo7nURs0
Becky