Wednesday, 11 February 2015

Pry my Kindle from my Cold Dead Hands

I've seen a number of articles in the last few months about the apparent dangers of E-readers.

  • The case against e-readers: Why reading paper books is better for your mind.
  • Serious reading takes a hit from online scanning and skimming, researchers say
  • Why you might want to ditch your e-reader and go back to printed books
  • Screen time 'harms teenagers' sleep'

    As I alluded to in early January, most of the books I plan to read in 2015 are electronic editions. Don't get me wrong, I love traditional books, but at this phase of my life, some E-books are a better investment than their traditional editions. I've had to move, or sell, or just plain give so many books away in the last couple of years, and I've travelled so much, that E-books are pretty attractive to me. I also tend to read books that I want to be able to search later - for example, I searched for one single quote for months and months between around 2010 and 2013, and finally found it completely by accident while re-reading Robert Kaplan's Imperial Grunts on a whim - and my Kindle is fantastic for finding passages, whereas traditional books are borderline worthless for the same purpose. So, I'll probably continue using my Kindle on many occasions for the foreseeable future.

    On a side note, I can't help but find it amusing that a newspaper which has been losing readership to the Internet and a state-operated media outlet with eroding market share are highlighting studies that say that you should avoid electronic screens.
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