I love digital books

A couple of weeks back I went to the beach for the day. I love a hot summer day at the beach with a good book! Now, the sand at Grand Beach is beautiful powdery white sand, but it gets in everything, so I didn’t want to take my BlackBerry PlayBook, which is what I mostly read on. I hadn’t used my old Sony reader for a while, so I got it out and dusted it off but the screen has gone all weird —I’m afraid it’s shot. So I went out and bought…a PAPER BOOK.

 

When I first started reading e-books, I occasionally still read print books too, but in the last year or more I don’t think I’ve read a single print book. So I opened up my new book at the beach and started reading, and in the bright sunshine that was fine.

Then I got into bed that night and picked up my book to read as I always do before going to sleep. And dammit…I could not see that tiny font very well. I have a bedside lamp that pulls out from the wall, so I yanked it over closer but even so…the paper page was sort of beige and the font was tiny and I kept blinking and trying to adjust my glasses so I could see it, but it wasn’t working.

Now, I am an old lady. My eyes are pretty bad, meaning I am VERY near-sighted, but my eye doctor told me that probably means it will be longer before I need bifocals, unlike my husband who started to need reading glasses at age 40. I haven’t yet had to go to bifocals, but it’s getting close. Sometimes if I have a hard time focusing on something very small with my glasses, I pull them a little lower on my nose and that helps.

From skobo

But it wasn’t helping me read this print book, and frustrated, I gave up and went to sleep. Reading on my tablet means the screen is bright white and backlit, so even in dim lighting I can see it clearly. The font can be adjusted from teeny tiny to nice and big. I so much missed reading on my tablet, I ended up skimming a lot of that print book just to get through it.

I know there are still people out there who resist e-books – they like to feel the paper book (and some apparently like to smell it; I personally have never been fond of the smell of musty old books). But I’m not one of them. I am so converted to e-books and my digital reader. I thought it was more about the convenience of instantly purchasing and downloading a book, even in the middle of the night, but now I am sold on how much easier it is for me to see the book, how clear and visible the text is…I didn't even realize the difference until I tried to read that print book.

How about you? Are you a digital convert or no?