Friday, June 24, 2005

War or peaceful coexistence of printed books and e-books?

I have quite a lot of print books at home. This is only a small fraction. I love my books, and converted a whole bedroom to be the library, it has so many bookshelves that I have a row jutting out into the room just like in a real community or college library. The space they take up is one negative of actual printed books. The positives completely outweigh the negatives.

Currently I am reading Accelerando by Charles Stross, in electronic format on my Treo. Very cool. Another e-book waiting on the Treo is Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow. Both use a reader called Plucker. I got my copy through a link on the Accelerando site. Both sites have a variety of formats

Another place to get free e-books to whet your appetite for science fiction and fantasy is the Baen books free library. I recently downloaded and read 1632 and 1633 by Eric Flint using the Mobipocket reader though Baen also have their books in a variety of formats.

Reading e-books usually prompts me to purchase and reread the hard copy, so my proclamation is for peaceful coexistence. The only issue I have is the proliferation of reader programs on my Treo. I need to figure out how to interconvert the texts to reduce the clutter.

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