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July 08, 2011



Paige Turner (Librarian)

You gave up on point 5 then? Strangely, it's this one that really resonates with me - and it's what I'd miss if I went down the ebooks road. I love the look and smell of books in my home. I love rearranging them, deciding where to put my new ones, shuffling the ones on my bedside table and, of course, judging all those whose homes I visit by their bookshelves! Books are not just content and they really do furnish a room!!!

Paige Turner (Librarian)

Regarding point 4, there's a brilliant new way of buying physical books without incurring the expense of a trip to London - I think it's called the information super web or something simliar. I've heard people talking about it... you just tell your computer which book you want and the postman brings it. Simples! ;-D

Phil Bradley

Paige - yes, you're quite right on 4) but I want my books NOW. To be fair, I do order uh.. quite a lot on Amazon as it is. :)

Point 5)I agree, there's a love and fascination in getting a lovely row of books together. But mine are all different sizes etc and the whole system soon turns to mush. I did have an entire room devoted to a library once, which was a great extravagance, but we loved it. However, space as with everything else, is at a premium.


I'm so glad someone else said it. I can count on one hand the number of books I've felt compelled to write in a book, and I stopped doing it a long time ago. When it comes to ebooks, the ability or inability to make annotations is not a deal-breaker for me.

Roger Fairman

"E-Books can't be used for interior design"

Why not?

Buy up a load of unwanted 1st generation kindles, superglue them to the wall - not my taste in wallpaper but someone might like it!!!

(Ok it's friday afternoon and ablout time I left the office!)

John Kirriemuir

"There yet". If, by that, they mean mainstream, then the sales figures show they are. Heck, I've even found myself in rural midwest American bars of late, surrounded by rednecks - reading kindles and ignoring the TV sports. Several times, not once.

If they mean "Only format" then that will never happen. Same as the paper print book hasn't been the only format, ever.

Also of note is that in the most registered for/attended talks at #ala11, several about ebooks were in the top 20.

Ivan Chew

Hmm... I think ebooks "aren't there yet" mainly because of two reasons: (a) the content and the container are separate and there's a larger "startup" cost to buying the container, i.e. the ebook reader. And (b) the content that I want may not be available for the container that I have. Actually the last point about ebooks not being able to be used for interior design -- I interpret the point as saying there's a wider and more aesthetic function of printers books. Whereas ebooks are merely single-purpose in that sense.


I know they are very popular now but I just don't think I could get used to reading books off a screen, maybe I'm just old fashioned.

Bo Wiberg

When you live aboard a thirty eight foot sailing boat, far away from your home country nothing can replace an e-reader. In my case a Sony. My wife also recently bought one.
We can get our books in any language we like. I don't have to go ashore and the boat doesn't fill up with books. What can be better?

John Kirriemuir

Anita: I thought that too. Then used the Kindle and Nook, got the former. And have read eight books on it so far, in different environments. You forget, in about 10 seconds, that it's not paper. And, unlike paper, you can adjust the font size, other aspects of the layout, to whatever is comfortable.

Reading off an ebook reader is (very) different to reading off a desktop computer. But you won't know until you try reading a whole book...

Helen Leech

Phil, while I broadly agree with you I have to take issue with you on point 5. To quote Anthony Powell, books do furnish a room. Entering a room with a well-filled bookshelf makes me salivate, while entering a bookless room makes me feel like something's missing. Interior design will be a sad, pale thing if the paper book is eradicated.

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