Author Topic: Want to read a good book?  (Read 2913 times)

Firemeboy

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Want to read a good book?
« on: August 30, 2006, 12:22:19 PM »
Google now lets you download and print entire books. So for example, want to read your kid Aesop's Fables? Click here. Download. Print.

You're good to go.
« Last Edit: August 30, 2006, 02:28:45 PM by Firemeboy »
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Shrain

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Re: Want to read a good book?[
« Reply #1 on: August 30, 2006, 02:12:11 PM »
hrm. Yes. But you know what I really want to do?

Remove that annoying little bracket in the title of this thread...
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Firemeboy

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Re: Want to read a good book?
« Reply #2 on: August 30, 2006, 02:29:19 PM »
That was a secret message to the Illuminati.  But they recieved the message, so I took it off.
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Re: Want to read a good book?
« Reply #3 on: August 30, 2006, 03:14:15 PM »
Perhaps I'm just a purist, but I much prefer a bound library book to a bunch of loose paper I had to pay for myself. If I'm gonna pay for it, it'll be bound and pretty.
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Firemeboy

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Re: Want to read a good book?
« Reply #4 on: August 30, 2006, 04:09:47 PM »
Well, they do sell really long staples, so you could staple the thing...  :)

I agree, and it's a pain (and expensive) to print out.  But if it gets some of these books into hands that may not have otherwise had the opportunity, then I think thats a good thing.
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Chimera

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Re: Want to read a good book?
« Reply #5 on: August 31, 2006, 02:45:51 AM »
Quote
Perhaps I'm just a purist, but I much prefer a bound library book to a bunch of loose paper I had to pay for myself. If I'm gonna pay for it, it'll be bound and pretty.

I'm the same. But I wonder if this sort of attitude will last past our generation. We grew up with books--they are the norm. But what about kids now? I look at them with their iPods and cellphones and MySpace accounts and laptops and frequent Internet use and online reading, from websites to email to blogs to IMs, and I wonder if the value of a printed, bound, and packaged book will be lost on them.

I think there will always be a demand for books. But still, I wonder what growing up in an increasingly "web" world will do to people like my nephew, who is four and has a leapfrog that looks and acts like a computer and is already preparing him to be tech-savvy. Which is perhaps why I'm always buying him books--to remind him of what's really important  ;) and make sure he grows up loving reading.
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Re: Want to read a good book?
« Reply #6 on: August 31, 2006, 09:16:11 AM »
books still offer things that e-formats don't: portability. Yes, you can put it on a PDA, but those don't hold much info on screen at a time. I think that books have a long time of preferred leisure reading format ahead of them.

Firemeboy

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Re: Want to read a good book?
« Reply #7 on: August 31, 2006, 12:14:57 PM »
Interesting that you mention PDAs.  I definitely fall into the 'book over screen' camp, but there are several books that I have read on my PDA, that I don't think I would have read otherwise.  Sure, books are portable, but PDAs even more so.  I always have my PDA/Phone with me.  So when I suddenly find myself in the doctor's office, or waiting for a ride, or whatever, I whip out my PDA, read a few screens of three musketeers, or Dracula, or Princess of Mars, and sooner or later I find that I've read the entire book.

I think Chimera has hit the nail on the head.  We will always have books.  They will never go away, but I think folks will move more and more to reading things on screens.  RSS technology, better screen readability, longer lasting batteries, less juice required will make portable reading devices more and more attractive.

Project Gutenberg has 19,000 books available.  If you could get all of those on one device...  I think some reading would happen.
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Re: Want to read a good book?
« Reply #8 on: August 31, 2006, 12:52:25 PM »
I think my point is not that people *won't* read on PDA. Heck, I've read most of Brandon's manuscritps on computer screen, as well as several other books.

But if I'm in a position to relax and I want to read a book, I'll grab one with pages. Even when going to the dentist, I'd rather have a hard copy with me than a PDA. Maybe "just a few pages" will gain more popularity, but for full relaxation, I can't imagine PDAs replacing books for at least several decades.

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Re: Want to read a good book?
« Reply #9 on: August 31, 2006, 04:50:05 PM »
This also begs the question: What would you read in the bathtub? The practical minded individual no doubt has considered the effects one wrong move would have on his PDA.

On the other hand, the movers like you more if your entire library is on the PDA. :)


Me, I think there will always be a demand for books. They don't require batteries, they don't require porting to new formats, they don't require backups.

Even if we get to a future where we get used to reading everything on wee machines, I think books will be treasured as art forms. The binding, the printing, the paper, the illustrations or photos....There are people that love the physical sensations of turning the pages, inhaling all that lovely new book smell. (My boyfriend has to be physically restrained at the Chronicle kiosk in the Metreon--their books smell delicious.)
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Peter Ahlstrom

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Re: Want to read a good book?
« Reply #10 on: August 31, 2006, 08:25:12 PM »
Sony guys came by last week to drop off the newest e-ink-based reader, and while I'm impressed, I think it still has a long way to go before it replaces printed books in many important areas of consideration.

But there may come a time when even though it doesn't yet compare favorably in terms of quality, enough people are using e-readers just for the convenience that it makes a significant enough dent in book demand that books become less economical to print, meaning higher prices, meaning more people turning to e-books, meaning... Maybe eventually e-books will replace mass market paperbacks, and only hardbacks/trade paperbacks will be on the shelves?
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Re: Want to read a good book?
« Reply #11 on: September 01, 2006, 03:15:37 PM »
I've heard that new SONY reader is really cool.

We discussed this in my interactive design class and my teacher, and most of the class, agreed that books will never go away-just like film will never truly go away- and that e-readers will only start to get popular when they can accurately simulate a book experience.  So that means real pages you can turn, like the on they have at Epcot.
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Re: Want to read a good book?
« Reply #12 on: September 01, 2006, 03:42:34 PM »
E-books and e-readers: I think part of it for me is how much I can see on a page at once, and how much my eyes have to scroll. On a smaller device, I only get a paragraph or two before I have to scroll down. Since I read fairly swiftly  and my eyes "grab" large blocks of text, this means I have to constantly scroll or press a button, and the text is moving fairly constantly. This becomes tiring after a while.

On a computer monitor at home, a lot of my ability to read swiftly and stay engaged has a lot to do with the format the text is presented in. Graphic design studies in useability have shown that many humans don't like having to move their head to read text over long periods of time. Thus websites that scroll all the way across a page are harder to read swiftly than website that maintain a comfortable perimeter from the edges of the screen. On wider formats, eyes tracking a line have a higher incidence of accidently skipping a line or re-read the same line over. Of course, many younger users seem to have less issues with this than older users, so some of it may be an issue of adaptation.


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