13 thoughts on “Ebooks”

  1. Though I haven’t read many e-books, I used to think similarly about audiobooks. I’m a long-haul truck driver, so the idea of listening while driving made sense. I wasn’t sure if I could consistently pay attention to the narration, as I’m more of a visual learner in classroom situations. But, I found that as long as the book is something I’m interested in, and as long as the narrator is a good one, I’m able to enjoy the book during the long hours on the open roads. Over the last few years, I’ve probably listened to hundreds of books, some of them multiple times.

    If you try audiobooks, try to listen to a sample, so you’ll know what to expect of the narrator before buying it. Most are pretty good, some are excellent, but a few make Charlie Brown’s teacher sound good!

    • Not sure how much my kind of a mind can be exercised but I do know I can’t read tough books e.g. physics books which my brother highly recommends. I have read a few of them and I just get this uneasy feeling that if I am truly honest with myself, I don’t really fully understand everything I read. I recently read what the linguist David Crystal said about how he couldn’t read one of Stephen Hawking’s books and I thought I could really identify with that. It does look like my kind of reading relaxes the mind more than exercises it. Hahaha

        • Depends on what the book is about. Some books you just can’t put down but some are just too boring. Book on physics are the ultimate bore. I once attended a talk by a physicist and I was so eager to see what he had to say that I bought one of his books with the exciting title of “A Universe from Nothing”. It started off well but like all my experiences with physics books, it soon gets very heavy-going and I began to wonder why of all the billions of books ever written, I had to pick a physics book. I always get this feeling when I am reading a physics book but I have never learnt my lesson. I just got a few more introduced by my brother. I think in a nutshell, the world of a physicist is a very different world and it’s very hard for normal humans to understand that kind of world. Life is too short to read such books. But there are definitely books that you like. A friend of mine once told me that he would never read a book. I told him to give Wilkie Collins, “The Woman in White” a try. He couldn’t put it down once he started. And he’s not the only person. I have yet to come across a single person who does not put off food and sleep just to finish the book. Apparently the UK PM Gladstone skipped an important function with a Russian visitor just because he couldn’t put the book down.

  2. I’ve still got 2 or 3 thousand physical books, but I suspect they will be seriously culled during our next move. Almost all of my new book purchases during the past year have been ebooks. I like being able to carry hundreds or thousands of books with me.

    • I have a huge library of physical books. I don’t believe in throwing any of them away. My brother just told me to be careful of ebooks. The light may prove harmful to our eyes over many years. I think I will wear sunglasses to read the ebook.

      • For ebooks on active screens, that may eventually be confirmed. Doctors for years have been pointing out that spending hours looking at computer screens isn’t good. Devices like the Kindle that use e-ink, however, don’t project light to form the image, so those shouldn’t be any worse than a regular book.

          • I think that a back-lit e-ink screen isn’t nearly as bad as an active LED screen, and in the daytime is probably not much different from reading an ordinary paper book.

          • Yes, that must be the safest for the eye. But can you read any pdf book with a Kindle or do you need to use a special Kindle format? The iBook in an iPad can read any pdf book.

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