e-book Experience
I don't have an e-reader device, and have actually turned down these devices when offered to me free. My parent's use them, and I know they like the feature allowing them to increase font size. They've been through several as the devices improve, and each time they've upgraded I was offered the old model. Each time I refused. I like the smell of real books. I see the great efficiency of e-books but I feel a book loses some of it's romance when it becomes binary code stored in a device. I admit it doesn't make much sense. I think it may have something to do with the recent popularity of tape cassettes with young people. They simply want something in their hand. Mp3s don't feel appropriately magical; only a physical talisman can appropriately capture the soul of music.
So I read Edgar Allan Poe's The Mystery of Marie Roget on my desktop computer at home, via Project Gutenberg, gutenberg.org. I think I've read it before, and probably found it equally disappointing, but I'd forgotten. Poe seems to focus this work on Inspector Dupin's close reading of newspaper articles rather than finding the murderer. But, I didn't have difficulty reading it in e-book format. The link led me to a volume of Poe in a single webpage. I then clicked the story title in the table of contents and was brought internally to that start. The text seemed small, so I enlarged it with Ctrl+ until it was a comfortable 200%. Then, I could use the down arrow or mouse scroll button to move down the page. It was ok. But I think there's some eye strain this way, something a true book is less likely to give me. Or, at least, it's a different kind of eye strain. I know e-readers have made great improvements in this line, but I think I will always prefer paper. If I can afford to, I'll always buy the book (used from Amazon).
So I read Edgar Allan Poe's The Mystery of Marie Roget on my desktop computer at home, via Project Gutenberg, gutenberg.org. I think I've read it before, and probably found it equally disappointing, but I'd forgotten. Poe seems to focus this work on Inspector Dupin's close reading of newspaper articles rather than finding the murderer. But, I didn't have difficulty reading it in e-book format. The link led me to a volume of Poe in a single webpage. I then clicked the story title in the table of contents and was brought internally to that start. The text seemed small, so I enlarged it with Ctrl+ until it was a comfortable 200%. Then, I could use the down arrow or mouse scroll button to move down the page. It was ok. But I think there's some eye strain this way, something a true book is less likely to give me. Or, at least, it's a different kind of eye strain. I know e-readers have made great improvements in this line, but I think I will always prefer paper. If I can afford to, I'll always buy the book (used from Amazon).
actually the eink devices do provide less strain. another nice thing about ebooks like the one you read is how easy it is to share with the class on your "board"
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