It seems to be an endless discussion.
What does "reading a book" mean? Is listening to an audiobook even reading? Can an ebook give you the same feeling as reading a "real" book? Why do people who like print books mention the smell so often? And so on ...
First of all, this post is just about my own experience. You do your thing, I do mine, we can talk about it without judging one another, right?
The inspiration for the post was "The Case of the Silken Petticoat" by Christopher Bush.
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| Trying out a pen? Or was it a kid (I have been guilty of drawing into two books as a small kid, and I wasn't a prodigy which could excuse that, I can tell you.) |
You may or may not know that I'm a librarian at the circulation department of a university library. I have seen books with as many marginalia as original text, books full of color (thanks to highlighting and underlining), loads of dog ears, coffee and other stains, ripped pages, but the worst was probably the acid victim (we have a chemistry faculty).
While I will never understand why people do that with books that don't belong to them, I get if people want to work with their books, add notes or highlight passages important to them - I made notes in my own copies of books we worked on in school - and I don't get grossed out by stains or foxing easily anymore unless they are really yucky or smelly.
I love print books. I love feeling the different kinds of paper. I love old books and if I had had a better experience at it during my first year of library training - which was neither my teacher's nor my own fault - I might have liked to try my hand at bookbinding.
I love marbled paper, gilt edgings and embossed book covers, sometimes with beautiful patterns. I love the uniqueness of a book and I can get excited over old journals even if they were about physics or chemistry.
And yes, I'm one of those who loves the slightly musty smell of old books, but I'm not a fan of active mold, that would be weird.
I still miss our old second-hand bookstore. The store still exists, but in a bigger space. The old one would probably be considered a fire hazard today with its narrow aisles, but for me it was like a beautiful book maze.
Over the years people have often tried to convince me to listen to audiobooks or to read digitally. One of them was the ex who loved his audiobooks, but I got distracted way too easily (or even fell asleep, but I don't count that as a con because I have hit myself with printed books or my tablet more than once falling asleep) and he finally gave up.
A friend kept telling me that she could take hundreds of books on her vacation bringing her book reader, but I never understood why that is an advantage when I could just take one or two books along and have the perfect excuse to go to a bookstore during my vacation.
So why do I read a lot more books in electronic form now? There are several reasons.
I have sold books (not really worth the hassle for me), donated books to reading projects, and now I take books to our public book cabinet, but there are still so many in my library.
It may be an age thing that I don't really want to add that many to them anymore on a whim, but only those that I'm pretty sure I'll want to keep for some reason or other.
My solution was of course to get myself a library card which I didn't have for years because I preferred to own my books. As mentioned before, I don't get much out of the house anymore, though, and although it's embarrassing to admit, I haven't always been good at returning books on time, anyway.
So instead of borrowing print books, I'm mostly hanging out on OverDrive.
And then there's The Internet Archive where I have read quite a few books last year, among them the book by Bush.
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| My former boss would have freaked out about this. I can still hear him "NEVER use ordinary tape on a ripped page!!" As if we would have dared. |
I had noticed before that it felt differently to me if I read a book on The Internet Archive or on OverDrive, but I didn't try to analyze why.
This book has been the one looking the worst so far, and strangely enough that was what made me realize that if I have to read books digitally, I prefer reading digitized books over real ebooks.
It probably has to do with my being so old-fashioned in some regards. I said above that I love the uniqueness of books. Maybe you remember the post about the rose between the pages of a book? Sometimes I find myself wondering about the story of the specific copy. Why the rose? Why the scribbles in the Bush book?
Real ebooks don't give me such a feeling even if I change the font or the spacing or whatever. Accessibility, quick and easy word definitions, visual adjustments, I understand the advantages. Maybe one day, I can't do without them anymore and will be happy to have them, but that day hasn't come yet.
A friend of mine said: "I do all my reading digitally. It really started when I found it easier to focus on the words than in a book." For me, it's the other way round. Digitized books give me at least a bit of that print book feeling which makes it easier for me to concentrate. And again - both is fine and it's great if we both get what we need to enjoy our reading!
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| Sometimes I miss not having to stamp books at work anymore 🙃 |
By the way, it even makes a difference for me which device I read on. I only got myself a tablet some months ago and I don't use it that often (yet?).
Having my laptop when I'm lying on my bed - where I do most of my reading these days, I don't have a couch - is often easier for me than having to hold the tablet because of my wonky thumb. Of course, I'm careful that it's not too hot.
The tablet obviously makes more sense if I already have a non-see through cat sitting or lying on my chest for some time (Gundel does it almost every day now and she doesn't care how comfortable or not it is for me which is okay because I'm here to serve my cats, their looks tell me 😂).
These days, I usually read three books at a time, by the way, a print book (still the best for me), an ebook, and a book I read to the cats which can be in print or electronic form.
That way I can pick what works best for me at that moment.
So - what's your personal reading experience and why?
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