Thoughts on E-Readers

Sometime not too long ago, I swore off e-readers. I owned a Nook back in the day, and while it served me well, I always felt that the experience of reading a book was never the same when I used an e-reader. In fact, I started to resent the idea of them. Who are we to change the way people have read for hundreds of years? Shouldn’t people enjoy Pride and Prejudice or Oliver Twist they way they were originally intended to? While most of the avid readers I know still prefer physical books, casual readers are more enticed by Kindles, Nooks, or even reading on tablets and iPads. E-readers swayed innocent readers over to the dark side, stealing away from them the pleasures of turning the pages of a books, scribbling notes in the margins, feeling the cracked and weary spine in their hands. I believed that I couldn’t be so easily fooled by this modern technology - I understood the value of a good old paperback. I bought used books online and relished in the fact that they were slightly beaten up and weathered by the years. I preferred a wrinkled and coffee stained novel to a shiny e-reader. This was a high horse I rode for quite a few years.

And then we stumbled into a global pandemic. Bookstores temporarily closed their doors, checking out library books wasn’t an option, Amazon Prime deliveries were no longer offered overnight or even within a few days , and suddenly the appeal of buying a book and having it appear seconds later in my hands seemed very, very tempting.

This temptation grew when I explored the website of my local public library and found OverDrive, where you can check out eBooks from your library and read them instantly on your computer or e-Reader. Without having the resource of physical library books available to me, I had been buying books to read while I was social-distancing at home, but this couldn’t be sustainable forever. I didn’t have endless money to spend on books, and some of the books I wanted to read weren’t available to buy through ThriftBooks, the used books website I usually buy from to save money. As well as discovering that I could borrow eBooks from my library for free, I also found the treasure trove Project Gutenberg - a website full of classic novels that you can read for free, in eBook form of course. Here at my fingertips were ways to read books without spending any money, provided I already had a Kindle or Nook lying around at home, which I did. My will to abstain from e-readers broke down. After realizing I no longer had the charging cord for my old Nook, I borrowed my mom’s Kindle and downloaded a variety of library books and Project Gutenberg books. And suddenly, I was a convert.

Let me clarify. I don’t think I’ll ever enjoy the experience of reading on an e-reader over the experience of reading a physical book, especially a soft, worn in paperback. I still hold paperback books as the most coveted reading experience in my eyes. The ability to completely disconnect and lose yourself in a book, without having to worry about a battery dying or constantly clicking to see what percentage of the way done you are, is an immeasurable luxury to me.

However, ideal experiences cannot be realistically available to us at all times. We might prefer to see all new releases in the movie theater, with a giant, buttery bucket of popcorn and a Coke, but we don’t. Most of the time, we choose the cheaper alternative of renting it On Demand from our couches, or perhaps even waiting until it comes out on Netflix or Hulu so we don’t have to spend the extra 3.99. My ideal reading experience not only includes a paperback book, but I’m also lounging on the beach on a sunny, 78 degree day with no wind and a calm ocean beating against the shore in the background. But it would be very inconvenient if this was the only condition I could ever read in.

Convenience - above all, this is the allure of the e-reader. Instead of paying 15 dollars and waiting five days for my book to arrive, I can borrow it from my library as an eBook for free, and have it downloaded to my Kindle in under a minute. E-readers also allow readers the ability to travel with an incredible number of books - Kindles can hold up to 3,500. For someone who loves to read on vacation, this feature is highly valuable (unless I’m traveling to the beach, of course - I could never stand to give up the enjoyment of reading my paperbacks on the beach).

E-readers make reading incredibly accessible, and for this I cannot fault them. I believe everyone should read more often, and if an e-reader can make that goal easier for people, including myself, I can appreciate that.