I was planning on buying the Kindle, and I was wondering if there are any users here who own one, or have previously owned one. In your opinion, is it worth buying, when i could just as easily borrow books from the library? Does it defeat the overall efect of the book, making it not as good as it could be? Im not sure if there is another thread like this, or if i even put it in the appropriate section. But i would appreciate all the information anyone can give me Thanks
There are other threads and I am sure that this will become more of a topic as time goes on and the children of the electronic age come into their own.. I have an iPad that I use for eBooking and I love it. For me the issue is that I live on a small island where the kinds of books I would like to read (science fiction) are not easy to come by. We have a Borders Books. It's not that we live in huts here; it's just that science fiction does not have a following in the hispanic world. So eBooks have been my salvation. Does it defeat the 'effect' of reading a book. No. Books are words. On the printed paper page or on an electronic screen, words they remain.
I am a major Kindle lover! I was a paper book snob until July, when my roommate had to go to hospital, and he had me buy a Kindle for him so he could read easily while he was there (he had problems with his hands and holding a thick book was painful for him - the Kindle was smaller and lighter and easier). He loved it, and bought the big Kindle DX when he got home, and I liked it so much that I bought a Kindle DX too. That's a lot of money to spend on Kindles, but it's worth it. The great thing about Kindles is that classic literature - Dostoevsky, Conrad, Dickens, etc. etc. - is available dirt cheap, or even free! You can get the complete works of Dostoevsky, for instance, properly set up and indexed for the Kindle, for less than five bucks. Same for piles of other stuff that's out of copyright. All of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories? Less than five bucks. Do you want to read Burroughs's original Tarzan books? They're free for the Kindle. Sure, you can get today's bestsellers and so on, but you can buy a lifetime's worth of good reading for the Kindle for less than you'll spend on lunch this week. And you can get it all into your Kindle in just a few minutes no matter where you are. Also, the Kindle has a built-in search feature, and a built-in dictionary - just move the cursor to the word you want, and the definition appears at the bottom of the screen. I don't have a lot of bookshelf space (or, to put it another way, the shelves I have are already overloaded with too many books), and I can expand my library almost indefinitely without buying any new shelves by downloading books to my Kindle. I love my Kindle. It's worth every penny and then some!
I really prefer to read things from an actual book that on a screen, so I'm not terribly interested in eBooks at the moment. What I do love is audiobooks, which I listen to during my 2-3 hour walks every day. I'm probably not allowed to put the name of the website I download them from on here! I agree that eBooks are a great solution for people who aren't able to physically access the books they want, but again, I'd go for an audiobook over an eBook. Just my preference
