I've been pondering the relative merits of electronic readers, audio books, and traditional print.
This past November my husband bought me a Kindle Fire. I have loved being able to carry around a whole collection of fiction, non-fiction and magazines in something the size of one paperback book.
I just downloaded the three-in-one Ann of Green Gables series for less than a buck. What a find! I've got books by Charles Darwin, H.G. Wells, Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, Condoleeza Rice, Robert Louis Stevenson, Orson Scott Card, and more all on the same nifty little device. I even downloaded a free copy of the 2012 presidential budget, just to see what it said. (I put it in with the rest of my fantasy books.)
As much as I do love my Kindle, I truly hope that we will always have books. There is just something special about holding a real book and turning the pages that an electronic reader can never fully replicate. Besides, there is a degree of commitment from a publishing house to preserve words on paper that sometimes signals a level of review and critique that is too often missing from the proliferation of self-published e-books that have flooded the market in recent years. Granted, there are books in print that are garbage and books published only in digital format that rock my world. Still, so many of the latter that I've picked up lately leave me crying for a decent copy editor. Seriously, would it be that hard to do a careful spell and grammar check?
Then there's the whole other world of books on CD/Tape/MP3. It's interesting to me that companies that produce these refer to consumers as "Recorded Books Readers" rather than "listeners". Why do you think that is?
One of the advantages of audio books is that people who are completely illiterate can still get the benefit of good books. Also, busy people like me who have limited time to just sit and read can take in books while doing other things. I listen to a lot of books in my car as I drive to and from work, or on road trips, or whenever I'm doing mundane chores around the house that require my hands but not my brain. As long as they have a good reader, I can get totally engrossed in a story I hear. Still, I process books I listen to quite differently than I do ones that I visually read. Somehow I respond to the language in a subtly different way.
As I've been thinking about the relative merits of reading on Kindle (or any other electronic reader), from print, or listening to audio books I really can't say that one is better or worse than the other. I just know that I'm a sucker for a good book. I'm always baffled by people who have the ability to read but choose not to. I get it that not everyone will like the same books that I do. But I honestly can't comprehend that there would not be SOME sort of book for everyone's taste.
From the time when I used to hide out in the old mulberry tree in my back yard as a kid to escape into Nancy Drew mysteries to later years engrossed in sci fi or tales of Middle earth, time spent with books has been my sweetest diversion. I am extremely grateful that I was born into a time and place where I was given education and had sufficient leisure time so that I could read as much as I do. I'm very aware that for much of the population of the world, especially for girls, that has not always been the case.
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