![]() ![]() The second thing that made me shudder – was the idea that one of the other authors William Palmer brought up, that corrupt governments would be able to manipulate ebook content to control what information was put out, change history if they so desired – this had never occurred to me. My reaction surprised me because I love the internet for many reasons. That was the first thing that made me shudder – now I have never ever been interested in computer games, Wii, Playstation all leave me cold – I have never understood the fascination, so the idea that text is not enough, that in order to fully experience a particular work I need to engage with online media actually horrified me. In the course of the discussion one of the authors – Booker long listed Richard House, talked about the multimedia content that he designed to sit alongside his enormous novel. Toward the end of the afternoon, prompted by a question from the audience there was a short discussion about ereaders. On Saturday I went to a readers afternoon at the new Library of Birmingham, where four authors talked about their work and gave some readings. On balance and in my saner moments I don’t really think so but then I think of a world – maybe long after I’m dead – without books and I break out in a sweat. However, I do occasionally have a little moment – when I wonder – is it the beginning of something terrible. I also strongly suspect that people are reading more classics these days because of the free availability of so many wonderful books for ereaders (yes they are reading rubbish too). Ereaders have meant that people suffering from various eye conditions can often continue reading long after they might have done otherwise. Kindle particularly – have democratised publishing – and made self-publishing more of an option for writers, and less of a joke than it once was. Many of the things I have said to people who declare a loathing of ereaders – I actually stand by – I strongly believe ebooks do have a place alongside tree books. Over the last two or three years I have heard a lot of people criticising the rise of the ereader –and while I totally understand their concerns, I have found myself defending the evil device. I started to wonder if all those books I have on it might have been read sooner if I had them in physical book form, and I decided that they may have been. I became quite concerned that maybe I had fallen out of love with my trusty ereader – which still contains many books that I really want to read. In the past I haven’t minded reading on the kindle – admittedly I have never read all that much on it – but the medium has never bothered me. I enjoyed the books I was reading on it at the time, but I began really missing a proper book, and started to feel irritated, which threatened to spoil my enjoyment of what I was reading. During the summer when I found myself using my kindle a lot – I found I was beginning to tire of reading on it. So far this year out of 105 books that I have read, only 11 have been read in ebook form. This is quite unusual for me – I read far more physical books than I do ebooks. Back in the summer – I read several books on my ereader, in fact while I was away on holiday I read three in a row on it. ![]()
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