Audiobooks, e-Books, Paper, etc.?
Ebooks. Kindle has a nice display showing how much is left in the chapter. It has a warm light back light, and i can take multiple books with me on a trip (i have some unfinished books).
I can put down the kindle without losing the page, or having to bookmark it. And i can sideload the books for free.
Physical books are tempting too as i can get them free at a library and very cheap second hand, but i know i would still prefer to read it on kindle where i can choose the font size I like.
I prefer physical books for the most part but I have a hard time justifying their cost when I own an ereader.
I like listening to audiobooks when I’m out and about but I find I’ll occasionally miss the odd sentence when I get distracted or forget to pause when I take my headphones off which leads to me skipping around trying to find where I was at.
I prefer ebooks. I like to be able to carry my library around with me. Also, I rarely reread books so they end up collecting dust after I read them.
When I was younger…well, there were only Palm Pilots back then, so it’s a bit unfair, but I’d prefer physical books, and if I were doing active reading then it’d usually be with a physical book.
Reading digital books now requires using a device that often has access to Youtube or something else that’s shorter and snappier and yet pulls hours upon hours out of my life.
And as I’ve gotten older…I haven’t read read a book in years. Is it a lack of attention span? Yes, which makes me feel sad and ashamed and so fucking frustrated because I could, I could read long books as a kid and now…I can’t.
It’s also that I have more to do: laundry, cleaning, work, cooking, errands, exercise… So there’s less time to sit down and read, or if I do, it feels increasingly hedonistic and therefore wrong to just do one thing at once. If I can multitask then shouldn’t I?
Audiobooks are both a godsend and a curse. I can actually consume books again! But I’m locked into the ease of it.
Actively choosing to doing just the one thing, for myself, is far harder than it ought to be.
Nice, thick, heavy hardcover, thick, textured pages, no jacket.
I started listening to audiobooks for my commute, and that’s mostly what I stick to these days. The right narrator can make all the difference though!
And the wrong narrator just makes a great read a slog and a half.
@ArmoredCavalry Ebooks solve so many problems for me. I’ll almost never read print if I can get the ebook.
Same, I also must read them on an ereader. I’ve tried my phone but it’s all so easy to just do something else on a phone.