Is it just me, or do others feel e-book Guilt?

[Dark Muse]

For my own personal reasons I do not really get into buying books online, and using amazon and other similar type of sources, though doing this can cause at times a bit of a disadvantage, particularly in relation to the various book discussions I like to partake in.

There are not any libraries (at least not a really good one) or book stores within particularly easily accessible distance from my house, being I do not currently drive, and so I cannot always just get out to a book store and get a book when I want one, thus I sometimes have to sit out on discussions of which I had wanted to participate and wait to read the book until I am finally able to get a copy and the bookstores don't always have the books I am looking for.

Previously I had never considered the idea or reading a book online, or electronically, I have always preferred to have the actual physical book in my hands, though for short story discussions I have often turned to the Internet. Then when a Victorian discussion group I belong to wanted to read A Christmas Carol and other Christmas stories by Dickens', I really wanted to read A Christmas Carol because I have seen movie versions of it done so often and always enjoyed the story via the movies, so I decided if I cannot get the book I am just going to read it online because I don't want to miss this one.

And after that I thought myself, why shouldn't I just read books online when I do not have the opportunity to actually get a copy, if I want to read the work, and get the partake in the discussion, and it is a book which is available via the Internet, there is no reason to pass up or put on hold, reading it.

There are some major advantages to reading online:

1. Getting to read what I want to read when I want to read it
2. Free is even better than a good deal at a used book sale
3. Don't have the impossible task of figuring out where to put the book
4. In books discussions it can be easier online to quote from the book or go back and look up references to particularly parts of the book.

Yet, when I do read a book online particularly if it is a book I have really been wanting to read I cannot help but to feel almost guilty in someway, without having in particularly reason why I should. There are some books for some illogical reason I really like I "should" read in physical book form.

I was wondering if any one else has "electronic book" guilt. One of my friends when he was raving to me about how great kindle is thought I was completely crazy and irrational when I tried to explain how it was "better" to have the actual book in my hands while reading.

[dfloyd]

I do use electronic books on disc if ir is more of a modern book. For example, I just listened to No Coubtry for Old Men and The Road on disc. I use the disc in the car and also use them at home when I'm doing chores or when my eyes are tired at the end of the day. since I collect finely printed and illustrated books, I always owe $200 - $300 at the end of the month for my hobby. I can't imagine ever using a Kindle, but I don't object to others using one. I believe that books are an art form, and the binding, the illustrations, the typography all blend together to make a book which is a compilation of skills which are the best example of what civilization is. And there are many people who pay exorbitant amounts for a book. I care for a finely printed, well-designed book. First editions are too much like collecting stamps or coins. I read where a first edition of Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night sold last month for $11,000, and it was poorly printed in a ragged paper dust jacket. So there are many types of books and book buyers. You are just one of many.

[JBI]

E-books are terrible - I am currently building my own little research facility in my house, focusing on East Asian, specifically Chinese scholarship, and I must say, the feeling of getting the books (which, slightly used, came relatively cheap, some at 3-5$ a volume for a 60$ book) has a feeling of its own. Generally, unless I must, I tend to use real print resources rather than electronic ones, as I know that print at least is verifiable, in the sense that it is in front of me, and is also 100x easier to read and use. I think when you work with print, you get an affinity for the book itself as a medium, and get a feeling for where, by site, exactly in the book things are that you want, and where exactly you were when you left off - the electronic readers seem to have none of that, and they also don't have the feeling of a book.

I, for instance, am not able to really read a 500-pager on-line - the display, the angle, the feeling, the pulse - everything is different - the physicality is just wrong to me, I cannot lie down on my bed in the angle I like, or flip the pages the way I like, or see how much exactly I have read the way I like to - also the price doesn't particularly bother me as I have no problem using a library, and the libraries available to me have virtually everything.


I guess I am old school, in the sense that I like my books to be printed, first of all, and second of all, heavily edited by scholars with great footnotage and so forth, as, it would seem, is no longer particularly popular in even most editions - American university presses though, it must be said, do a particularly good job most of the time, with providing excellent footnotage in their publications.

Perhaps I am just idiosyncratic, but I can't personally, for instance, read the Penguin Faerie Queene and enjoy it - an e-text with the notes on the bottom seems even drearier.

[optimisticnad]

Like JBI above, I am also old school, i like printed copies, i like to hold them feel them and smell them even ;) I detest navigating e-books. My god is it annoying. Whereas a book...so much easier to handle.

However having said that being able to read on my mobile for example in bed helps. And what I tend to do now is have a hard copy and e-copy because I can't carry thick books around with me all day, im petite as it is!

Perhaps the guilt you feel Dark Muse is not guilt but rather that feeling when you try new shoes, it's a bit odd, not as good as your old ones, but necessary and if you walk in them enough times you'll be used to them in no time.

[Virgil]

I have trouble sitting in front of a computer screen and concentrating for hours at a time. The Kindle type of equipment might work for me but I haven't tried. I can read a poem on the computer but a whole short story is a problem. A novel is out of the question.

[optimisticnad]

I have trouble sitting in front of a computer screen and concentrating for hours at a time. The Kindle type of equipment might work for me but I haven't tried. I can read a poem on the computer but a whole short story is a problem. A novel is out of the question.

I'm with you. My eyesight is deteriorating rapidly as it is. :(

[Dark Muse]

E-books are terrible - I am currently building my own little research facility in my house, focusing on East Asian, specifically Chinese scholarship, and I must say, the feeling of getting the books (which, slightly used, came relatively cheap, some at 3-5$ a volume for a 60$ book) has a feeling of its own. Generally, unless I must, I tend to use real print resources rather than electronic ones, as I know that print at least is verifiable, in the sense that it is in front of me, and is also 100x easier to read and use. I think when you work with print, you get an affinity for the book itself as a medium, and get a feeling for where, by site, exactly in the book things are that you want, and where exactly you were when you left off - the electronic readers seem to have none of that, and they also don't have the feeling of a book.

I, for instance, am not able to really read a 500-pager on-line - the display, the angle, the feeling, the pulse - everything is different - the physicality is just wrong to me, I cannot lie down on my bed in the angle I like, or flip the pages the way I like, or see how much exactly I have read the way I like to - also the price doesn't particularly bother me as I have no problem using a library, and the libraries available to me have virtually everything.


I guess I am old school, in the sense that I like my books to be printed, first of all, and second of all, heavily edited by scholars with great footnotage and so forth, as, it would seem, is no longer particularly popular in even most editions - American university presses though, it must be said, do a particularly good job most of the time, with providing excellent footnotage in their publications.

Perhaps I am just idiosyncratic, but I can't personally, for instance, read the Penguin Faerie Queene and enjoy it - an e-text with the notes on the bottom seems even drearier.

Haha normally and generally I would agree with everything you said, in fact that sounded a lot like my argument to my friend when he was advocating kindle.

But alas I fear the current inconvenience of my situation regarding acquiring books is causing me to re-evaluate some of my old ideals.

[Dark Muse]

Perhaps the guilt you feel Dark Muse is not guilt but rather that feeling when you try new shoes, it's a bit odd, not as good as your old ones, but necessary and if you walk in them enough times you'll be used to them in no time.

Yes, maybe that is true.

[Paulclem]

Habits. You've just got into particular/ idiosyncratic habits - though granted reading on screen is a bit of a strain, (but not so with the new e-readers). There's nothing wrong with idiosyncrasies of course, it's just that the younger kids will develop different reading type habits and really fire the e-readers along, whatever form they take.

As DFloyd said, books are, and will become more of an art form in themselves as other reading mediums take over. Perhaps on this forum in the future, there will be people declaring how difficult it is to get comfortable with a paper book - let alone a hardback that makes the wrist ache - when they can get the text comfortably projected onto the easy-read screen embedded in their contact lenses - or whatever.:lol:

E-book guilt? No. I want one. (Won't be happening jst yet though).

[stlukesguild]

I do have a number of e-texts saved to my hard drive... but mostly of works that I have never been able to find in any other format. I vastly prefer the book as as actual physical object both as a reader and as a lover of books as art objects. I have been building my own personal library since college and it grew quite slowly for a good length of time... although years ago there were far more independently owned used book stores in which I was able to find some of my most beloved books. Now I am sitting is what amounts to a virtual small library of some 3000 books and 1300 CDs. The Arts... books, music, art... and attending art events/concerts/museums are what I spend my expendable income upon. I have long loved browsing in used books stores, library and university book sales where I can hold the books and examine them, but I seriously wish I had taken advantage of the deals available through online sales.

[Dinkleberry2010]

In the past few years, I've become a big fan of attending yard sales, because, for one reason or another, people are selling their books at ridiculously low prices. Just recently, I was able to purchase at a yard sale a hardbound copy of Nietzsche's Beyond Good And Evil for one dollar. And it was in good condition. It's amazing the number of good books you can purchase at yard sales for low prices.

[Dark Muse]

In the past few years, I've become a big fan of attending yard sales, because, for one reason or another, people are selling their books at ridiculously low prices. Just recently, I was able to purchase at a yard sale a hardbound copy of Nietzsche's Beyond Good And Evil for one dollar. And it was in good condition. It's amazing the number of good books you can purchase at yard sales for low prices.

Haha maybe next time I am out walking around and I see a sign for this or that garage or yard sale I will drop in.

[Jozanny]

My guilt comes from having burned a serious hole in my budget with instant downloads, but I do not mind a decent html text on pc or ereader, not that there aren't disadvantages. I have to worry about treating my kindle nicely. I have to worry about freezes and charging the battery, and on pc, unless the ereader download for the pc changes this, I have got to copy my book mark place, but I like having the choice--and reading Shakespeare online is easier than hauling my Riverside off the shelf.

[kiki1982]

Correction JBI, you can actually see how much you have read... There is this little block on the side... :lol: But I grant you the fact that the amount of pages are actually more enjoyable to see than that little block on the side...

Seriously, now...

I have only ever read one real novel from Project Gutenberg and that was Jane Eyre. Because... I was so intrigued after the BBC's adaptation in 2006 being so different from the one in 1996 that I wanted to read it there and then. So, I downloaded it. For the rest, I have now downloaded Courtilz de Sandras's Mémoires de Mr d'Artagnan, but that is a book of 1700 and is probably very difficultly to be found in France (or any French speaking country) only. It was an obscure book even at the time Dumas made his Three Musketeers... So, no chance there to find it in print. Only by sheer luck.

For the rest, I only download or read quickies online, like Shakespeare's plays if I want to read one and Byron I have done (as they are short and I don't really analyse them at length), but other than that, serious reading is not exactly comfortable with a laptop on your knees or with your arm stretched out to the mouse of your computer. Everything starts to ache after a while and your eyesight deteriorates.

However, e-books are very good for research. Ctrl-f and away you go. No useless flipping around for a frustrating whole hour. How many times does this or that word occur? You'll know it directly.

I do have to agree about the footnotes: nothing worse than having to scroll all the way down and then up again, not remembering where you are. In an e-book without illustrations that is also a great pain for the next day: no bookmark to show you where you were, or you have to remember the paragraph or page number that was scanned in...

[mal4mac]

I much prefer reading books than reading from the screen. I find reading from the screen tiring and a strain. Usability experts suggest it's not just one of my many psychological quirks:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/whyscanning.html

I joined Questia so I could access expensive philosophy books easily and cheaply. I copy and pasted notes as I read, so the interactivity kind of balanced out the nastiness of screen reading. Even so, I could only bear doing this a few hours a day, then sank into an easy chair with Dickens for some relief. No way would I read the Christmas Carol online! (I'm also using Questia less and less. I'm now of the opinion that if you need to make notes to understand a book the book's not worth the bother.)

Nielsen suggests that the Kindle gets round the readability problems, but clumsiness is one of my quirks. If I drop a Kindle that could be a lot of money down the pan! Also, you can buy paperback classics really cheaply, read them, and sell them on ebay/pass them onto friends/library. So for the price of Kindle you can buy a lot of classics, re-distribute them to the masses, and have no worries about electronic failures/muggers/clumsiness...

Dark Muse, why do you have a phobia against buying online? With no car and no store within walking distance this looks like a phobia worth defeating...

[Kevets]

I would agree if it were reading on a backlit PC. But reading on an e-ink Kindle, the experience is fine. Better in some ways (ability to annotate, highlight and search your notes and highlights, ability to look up words easily with the on-board dictionary, and of course free classics). And I can feel all "green" and virtuous. I wear tri-focals and have had glasses since I was 2. I find the Kindle easier to read long term than a paperback. And you can walk around with 250 books on a slim device. If I want The Mill on the Floss now, I can have it in a minute.

Books are beautfiful and when I moved, I paid a lot of money to have many boxes of them moved with me. But there isn't as much boohslef space in the new place, and many of these sit still in boxes in the basement.

So no guilt here. I think the advantages far outweigh the drawbacks.

[Red-Headed]

In the past few years, I've become a big fan of attending yard sales, because, for one reason or another, people are selling their books at ridiculously low prices. Just recently, I was able to purchase at a yard sale a hardbound copy of Nietzsche's Beyond Good And Evil for one dollar. And it was in good condition. It's amazing the number of good books you can purchase at yard sales for low prices.

I've picked up similar bargains at car boot sales.

[Dark Muse]

Dark Muse, why do you have a phobia against buying online? With no car and no store within walking distance this looks like a phobia worth defeating...

It is not really a phobia, I just do not like the payment options online. I don't want to drain my checking account, I try to save that money. I prefer to buy books with the loose cash I have on hand.

If I had a gift card or something I will order a book online from a stores online book store using the card.

But I just don't want buy all my books on debut or charge.

[purpleViolet]

I spend my days in front of a computer so cant imagine reading an e-book. I do tend to buy 2nd hand though.

[MarilynMonroe00]

For awhile I would only buy new books. Then I transitioned to the cheapest possible copy available. The reason being, I asked myself why was I buying a book? To acquire the contents within or have a nice looking ornament on a shelf? That being the case I'll opt for online books every time now. Especially if they're free.

If you do a lot of reading on the computer I strongly suggest looking into one of these babies:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Serial_Visual_Presentation