Do you Kindle?

Green Apple Books in San Francisco touts the benefit of books over The Kindle in a couple of videos you can link to here.  I'm sure The Kindle will continue to increase in market share, especially once its hefty price tag comes down, and fear that books may one day go the way of the soon-to-be bygone newspaper.  

That's bad news for us visual, tactile learners.  There's something about the simple arrangement of printed words on a page without the flickering illuminated background that helps us process information.  And being able to leaf through the pages of a book helps us scan information in less time than it takes to navigate virtual pages on a computer screen. 

Still, I'm willing to concede a few points to The Kindle, which,  in the interest of full disclosure, I have used but don't own.  On a couple of considerations, here's how I'd rank the two:

• Readability:  Its harder for me to read from a Kindle than a book, but easier than a computer screen.  I suspect this has something to do with pixels, or LEDS, or program codes I have no interest in understanding, but maybe it's simply what I'm used to.  If kids today learn to read on a Kindle, will they have an easier time than someone like me as an adult?  I don't know.  For now, it's books over Kindle.

• Chiropractics:  Could you really put a dollar amount on the pain and suffering that came with carting around a semester's worth of text books as a law student?  The Kindle weighs about as much as a paper clip.  My Con Law book alone - more than an iron cannon ball.  Kindle over books, easy. 

• Green factor:  Downloading books saves a forest worth of trees, but I suspect Kindle's full of cancer-causing component parts mined from somewhere in central Africa by kids themselves too young to read.  And what to do with a Kindle that breaks?  Well, like the rest of our e-junk, send it to China where a different set of kids can get led poisoning 'recycling' our gadgets.  Sigh.  I can drop a book or tear a page and still make use of it.  Books over Kindle.

So what say you, readers . . . do you Kindle?

-Kathleen Bergin

Comments

[Professor Tracy McGaugh]

Kath, you should try a Kindle for a week or so. It's true that it's cheaper, greener, lighter. But also, the technology really doesn't feel like flickering words on an illuminated page. The technology is really, really good. You lose yourself pretty quickly in the book-ness of it. As far as skimming, you still have that ability.

To me, it's not at all like reading on a computer screen (which is sort of off-putting to me sometimes). After using a Kindle for about 18 months and losing it in June on a plane, I was apoplectic. I did eventually get the Kindle back . . . in the meantime, I attempted to do what I could to clear about my collection of unread "real" books by . . . well, reading them. I am a bibliophile, so I enjoyed reading the real books, but not as much as I enjoy having my Kindle back.

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

I'm an unrepentant and unabashed bibliophile and will never buy a Kindle (the fact that we don't have, say, a microwave oven or that I don't own a cellphone are only incidentally related to this). I spend enough time looking at either a computer monitor or the TV screen and looking at or reading a book is blessed relief: it's far easier on my eyes and brings in its wake subtle or refined aesthetic pleasures (well, not always, but enough to notice).

I absolutely adore the sensual nature of books well made: from the typeset to choice of cover art, the smell of the paper and binding, and so on and so forth. No tally of costs and benefits will convince me of the comparative virtues of the Kindle. 'Tis true, our condo looks more like a library than a home and our dining table is my desk (hence stacked with books), but I wouldn't have it any other way. And I even have a perverse bit of fun enlisting family members to help me locate a book after failing to recall where I've placed it!

And although we have a large collection of books, I'm not a book collector. Still, it's hard to describe the pleasure I find in discovering a first edition of a book by a favorite author. For instance, I recently found at my favorite used book store a first edition of Kenneth Rexroth's One Hundred Poems from the Japanese, 1955: "this edition was designed by Hans Mardersteig and printed at the Stamperia Valdonega, Verona [Italy], in the month of July MCMLV, the type used being Bembo."

Lastly, I'm in a state of unadulterated bliss when browsing (used and/or locally owned) bookstores and library shelves.

[GJELblogger]

I'm VERY torn on the electronic book issue. I don't own a Kindle, but rather a Sony E-reader. I love it because I can download academic papers from places like SSRN and have them in pdf format on the go. I also love that I don't kill any trees this way. And all the public domain books from Google are free, and in a format exclusively for the Sony version of the technology.

Don't get me wrong though, I LOVE books. And perhaps this is my problem. I think libraries are wonderful, and have borrowed my share of books. But now that I can afford to buy books, I want to buy and cherish every book I read. And I simply do not have the space! the E-reader allows me to own, go back and reread, and have my books forever. And if you ever go on a long journey, you can carry several books with you at once, so you're never out of reading material.

The two major flaws that I consider it to have are these: 1) I can't underline my favorite passages or take notes directly in the book, and 2) I can't lend a great book to anyone else.

I'm considering only using the ereader for frivolous sorts of books, like summer novels and that sort of thing, so that the books I really want to write in and share I can still purchase in their paper forms. And I'm not above buying a book twice if I really love it...