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Books Won't Die

theparisreview.org

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Re: Books Won't Die

#81

Post by sieabahlpark »

icebraining wrote: post #30
sieabahlpark wrote: post #4

Why buy a book when you're limited to the device you can read it on and at the whim of when the company will revoke your license to read it? Nevermind you're also subject to poor application design. Has anyone tried to read books on Windows and had a decent time? I can't find a single app that keeps track of where I am in ebooks or PDFs and it's terrible.

> Why buy a book when you're limited to the device you can read it on You mean a single-use device made of paper, that you have to wait to be shipped if buying online? I agree, that's terrible :)

You must have never owned a Kindle that died on you. Now all my books are inaccessible.

Re: Books Won't Die

#82

Post by sieabahlpark »

shkkmo wrote: post #63
reaperducer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That claim appears suspicious to me. Is there some data to back you up on that? Libraries with books that are hundreds of years old. but felling trees isn't less evil either New trees literally grow on trees.

> Libraries with books that are hundreds of years old. Scrolls and tablets pre-date books by quite a bit. History would seem to actually show that properly baked clay tablets are the most durable. Books are far more vulnerable to fire, water and air. edit: Looking towards the future, broadcasting an e-book to the stars is probably the most durable (and hardest to recover) form of storage.

There is no need to be pedantic. A scroll is clearly the same concept as a book before they figured out how to bind books...

If you want to stand the test of time there is no substance that will survive if a great destroying force is used. It doesn't further your argument when clay bricks are the source of truth. All I know is I can leave a book on a shelf for years and pick it up and read it instantly. I'd be lucky if the device turned back on and could get the latest Kindle update 5-10 years from now.

Books don't have batteries so I'm not limited to how long I want to read. Here's the other kicker, no one can revoke my access to this book or push language updates to the book. It's a preservation of the past.

There are many reasons to still use books.

Re: Books Won't Die

#83

Post by machinehermit »

libraryatnight wrote: post #12

I've tried every format and device and I can't read e-books. Nothing, to me, beats a real book. I don't enjoy the experience for one, it strains my eyes (yes even e-ink). But also, and this is something I wouldn't have considered back when I was younger and it seemed like books surely must die in their dead-tree form, I actively seek ways to not be interacting with electronics and books are sublime for this purpose.…

Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 with the adaptive display on is just better than any book IMO. The lighting is always perfect, the text is clearer than paper.

I will be heart broke then I eventually have to replace it. To do anything but read on it is a sin.

Reading on paper, I am just slower than reading on the S 8.4.

2560x1600 on such a small screen is what is needed to beat paper.

Re: Books Won't Die

#84

Post by ktpsns »

Retric wrote: post #80
ktpsns wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Books spawn a similar hierarchy then electronical devices -- there are colouring books, crossword puzzle books, children's books, comic books, textbooks, academic books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases, all kind of booklets -- just to name a very few! There is no way all of them are magically replaced by their electronical counterparts, namely eBooks, tablets, smartphones, notebooks or classical workstations. Ma…

I will give to you toddler picture / teething books. But for every other item on that list “there is an app for that.” Atlases for example don’t compare to google maps. As to price, Tablets are already going below 50$. Once you start talking about multiple books electronics quickly became cheaper. PS: Coloring apps can be printed out, which does not save on paper but still develops fine motor skills.

There are also apps for toddler books. If it's not about the price or usage scenario (pro tip: Don't give your electronic device to your toddler), there is still the overall feeling of a book. The comparison between a scrollable, zoomable digital map to a traditional atlas is the perfect example. For recreational purposes, I love the beautiful art and feeling of large and bulky picture books and atlases. Even a 12" IPad doesn't come close to that feeling.

Re: Books Won't Die

#85

Post by JohnFen »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #60
JohnFen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, it depends on the book. For recreational reading, I strongly prefer real, printed ones. For reference materials, I strongly prefer electronic ones (stripped of DRM and converted into a non-proprietary format). I can keep my entire technical library on my phone and I can grep through the entire set of books for something in particular that I need to find. I remember the days when my technical library was in pr…

I'm curious about this: "I can grep through the entire set of books for something in particular" What software do you use for this? I'm guessing you're not literally running grep at a command line on your mobile. So what software do you use that allows you to search through multiple ebooks? Is there an Android or ios equivalent to DocFetcher?

I actually use grep, although I whipped up a simple GUI front end for it.

Re: Books Won't Die

#86

Post by JohnFen »

telotortium wrote: post #38
JohnFen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, it depends on the book. For recreational reading, I strongly prefer real, printed ones. For reference materials, I strongly prefer electronic ones (stripped of DRM and converted into a non-proprietary format). I can keep my entire technical library on my phone and I can grep through the entire set of books for something in particular that I need to find. I remember the days when my technical library was in pr…

How do you do this in practice? What do you use for OCR, and what do you use to search all the books on your phone?

I don't OCR, I buy the books in electronic form. I convert them to both text and PDF files. I grep to find the book(s) that have what I'm looking for, and search individual books using the PDF reader.

Re: Books Won't Die

#87

Post by jpindar »

sieabahlpark wrote: post #81
icebraining wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why buy a book when you're limited to the device you can read it on You mean a single-use device made of paper, that you have to wait to be shipped if buying online? I agree, that's terrible :)

You must have never owned a Kindle that died on you. Now all my books are inaccessible.

Did you somehow get banned from Amazon?

My Kindle died on me. All my books that were from Amazon are still available:

1. for download to the Kindle app on my computer

2. for download to the Kindle app on my phone

3. for download in a format I can read (and deDRM and convert) with Calibre

The ones that weren't from Amazon were on my computer before they were ever on the Kindle, so they're still there, along with the ones I backed up.

Re: Books Won't Die

#88

Post by HSO »

theli0nheart wrote: post #76
HSO wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As long as children are taught to read on paper books, we will have an emotional connection to the printed page. I've learned to read on paper books and I have zero attachment to them at this point. In fact, I cringe when I occasionally have no alternative (or just scan it myself if it's not too much). Old books now seem to be broken to me. You can't do anything with them except read (linearly). So much functionali…

What you're describing is functional attachment. Emotionally, how would you feel if all of the printed books in the world were to disappear today? Would you miss them?

I don‘t think I would. I just don‘t see the point anymore. Don‘t get me wrong, I once was a romantic too! :) I used to spend entire afternoons after school in the bookstore or libraries and had a pretty good library. Now when I see paper books I groan a little. Too heavy, too much material/waste, too impractical, and most of all kind of fusty. What‘s the point.

Re: Books Won't Die

#89

Post by HSO »

sateesh wrote: post #78
HSO wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As long as children are taught to read on paper books, we will have an emotional connection to the printed page. I've learned to read on paper books and I have zero attachment to them at this point. In fact, I cringe when I occasionally have no alternative (or just scan it myself if it's not too much). Old books now seem to be broken to me. You can't do anything with them except read (linearly). So much functionali…

Old books now seem to be broken to me. You can't do anything with them except read (linearly) At times this is a plus too. While reading online many a times I get distracted by some reference and go tangential looking for more details on that than moving on with the book.

The „trick“ I use is I‘m offline by default and have to „turn the internet on“ on most devices (except the phone). Been doing thst for 8 years now, works pretty well.

Re: Books Won't Die

#90

Post by shkkmo »

sieabahlpark wrote: post #82
shkkmo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Libraries with books that are hundreds of years old. Scrolls and tablets pre-date books by quite a bit. History would seem to actually show that properly baked clay tablets are the most durable. Books are far more vulnerable to fire, water and air. edit: Looking towards the future, broadcasting an e-book to the stars is probably the most durable (and hardest to recover) form of storage.

There is no need to be pedantic. A scroll is clearly the same concept as a book before they figured out how to bind books... If you want to stand the test of time there is no substance that will survive if a great destroying force is used. It doesn't further your argument when clay bricks are the source of truth. All I know is I can leave a book on a shelf for years and pick it up and read it instantly. I'd be lucky…

Well, an digital book is the same concept as a paper bound book and is arguably more conceptually similar than a tablet.

You can't easily encrypt and hide a paper book or distribute to multiple backup points. Paper books are much easier to censor and burn.

A Kindle is an e-reader, one of many devices that can be used to read e-books. If your e-reader is destroyed, you can buy another one and restore your digital books from backups.

Nobody can revoke your access to an e-book without DRM and it is very easy to strip DRM and backup your e-books. Nobody but me can change the copies of e-books I have stored in various mediums.

Clearly the paper book and the digital book have different trade offs (I love paper books) but books are not the most durable medium in history and paper books are not categorically more durable than digital books. I would bet good money that in the far future, if humans exists, the vast majority of books we have today will have survived directly because they were digitally encoded and stored at some point in their history.

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