A begrudging defense of ereaders

So I have had this conversation with others and myself so often I decided to put it in a public place I can just point to rather than rinse and repeat for the unth time.

First of all, for all  you ereader haters out there, I understand. I so totally understand. I am a flat out crazy bibliophile. I am 22 and there is no hope for me. I buy books like most women buy shoes. I fought (and won) the battle to get the bedroom with built in bookshelves and despite double rows of books (which I hate doing) and my bookshelf from college, I am out of room. The first thing I do when I pick up a book is smell it. I go to Barnes & Noble just to smell the intoxicating smell of ink on paper and gaze admiringly at books. I visit old friends and explore for potential new future friends. I look on those that bend pages, crease spines, and dent covers with utter loathing and horror. Despite knowing the benefits of underlining and writing in books, I still cannot bring myself to write in my books.

I could go on, but hopefully we have established that I am probably certifiably insane when it comes to books.

Then ereaders came out which caused a reaction of both delight, trepidation, and incredulity. Thoughts swirled through my head.

"Ooooo. Books."

"But there aren't pages to turn. And the smell...."

"Finally, the bookstore you can bring with you ANYWHERE!"

"It's totally not the same."

Continue that argument on. By a lot.

Anyways, after that I mostly ignored ereaders and just stuck with my beautiful paper and ink lovelies. But it was still there, in the back of my mind, and finally I caved and purchased my first ereader, the Barnes & Noble Simple Touch, after a considerable amount of research and debate.

I purchased it slightly before my fall break for that school year. I was going back to Honey Rock Camp for the break, and thought of all the ways it could help improve the quality of my stay there. I have spent a considerable amount of time at HRC in my life, and it affords more time for reading than most places. However, despite this delight, this fact also raised problems. For as long as I can remember, my standard amount of books to bring up with me was roughly a backpack full. However, a backpack filled to the brim with books is both heavy an unwieldy. I also more often than not read several books at one time, switching to whatever struck my fancy at the time. Despite my variety, I would often run out of books before the allotted time had elapsed. Worse than all this, is lugging a backpack of books around is not good for the books. Despite my best efforts, pages would get creased, covers dented, heaven forbid, even occasionally a tear. An ereader could hold all those books and more and being made of plastic is much less easy to damage than mere paper.

So there. I had caved. I had gone to the dark side, if you will. And as I became more familiar with my new toy, I found new features that only made me love it more. For one thing, PUBLIC DOMAIN BABY! There are so many books that aren't under copyright anymore, and if you look in the right places, you can easily get those on the ereader for free. Related to that, you can borrow ereaders from your library WITHOUT LEAVING YOUR HOUSE. But I will get to that later.
Another benefit that helped with my OCD inability to write in books is you can highlight and take notes in the Nook. Now, it's not the easiest typing ever, but it's a lot better than trying to bring yourself to defile the pure page before you with a pencil or *gasp* even a pen. Especially nice for class when your professors make those brilliant comments you want to remember.

But back to the library. Last summer, as some of you may know, I went to England. And I bought a ridiculous amount of books. And I read a ridiculous amount of books. And with only the help of my computer, I downloaded a ton of books from my hometown library. From England. For free. No late fees because you've lost the book and don't have time to make it to the library yet. Also, I have since upgraded to a Nook HD and you can download AUDIOBOOKS straight onto the device and listen to them wherever you are.

All that to say, I've been converted. I still spend entirely too much money on "flesh and blood" books, but my Nooks have benefitted my reading experiences far more than they have detracted from them. Before I sign off this probably already too long post though I have one more word to put in on the ereader front.

Don't get a Kindle. Just don't. Part of this is straight up prejudice. I can't forgive Amazon for it's continued efforts to make bookstores obsolete. Not okay. I would say my number one reason for this statement is because of technical reasons however. Most ereaders use the ePub format. It's not universal, but it's as good as, and means that even though I decided to go with a Nook, if Barnes & Noble goes the way of Borders (heaven forbid) I can continue to happily buy books from one of many other sources. Kindles have a very special Kindle format that only works with Kindles. (By the way, this argument is hilarious coming from a huge Apple fan. But still.) I purchased my Nook because even though it was an ereader, I would be supporting a bookstore. A REAL LIVE YOU CAN ACTUALLY GO THERE BOOKSTORE. The format of the ebooks available for download however also leave for a great deal more flexibility and diversity. I'm not saying GO BUY A NOOK. I'm just saying DON'T GO BUY A KINDLE.

My goodness it has been awhile

So it has been almost a full year since I have written a post. It has been a crazy year. Many things have happened...

Many things....

The first event I have to announce is I HAVE OFFICIALLY GRADUATED! I even got my official shiny diploma the other day with four impressive squiggles on the bottom that says I graduated. Wow, that is an accomplishment. After four hard years at Wheaton, I'm ready to take that pretty piece of paper and run. Another big accomplishment was that I earned my black belt in TaeKwonDo. Wow, do both of those accomplishments feel good.

So I'm cruising through summer, working at several different jobs and trying to get a hold of the new change in my life again. Even though I did just graduate, I'm already back in class at our community college taking a web design class. I'm hoping to be able to update this blog sometime soon to demonstrate my new skills. Stay tuned. :)

So this isn't a very long update, but I really needed to post SOMETHING to get me going again. Stayed tuned for updates. I have many ideas and occurrences that I'm excited about.

Stay classy internet.