BOOKS - PAPER OR ELECTRONIC?

Kindle vs paper books

I bought an Amazon Kindle back in 2010; since then, I've only bought a few paper books for myself, usually when the Kindle version wasn't available. I acquired a Kindle Fire a few years later and now I'm rarely without it. I love being able to carry a whole library of books around with me and being able to read any of them at any time.

Not everyone, however, likes the idea of electronic books. For many people, the appearance, texture and smell of paper books is important. It has also been pointed out to me that, should Amazon ever fall, I could lose my library of electronic books.

As a perpetual Open University student, I've found that Kindle or e-books don't always work well as textbooks, particularly when you want to have several of them open at the same time, or when you're asked to read certain pages and the e-book has no page numbers.

When I used paper books, I frequently lent or gave them to other people once I'd finished reading them. This can't be done with Kindle books and I do sometimes miss being able to do that.

The Kindle is fairly simple to use for anyone who is comfortable using, for example, a mobile phone; it does, however, require some technological know-how. This might be regarded as a problem by some people.

Despite these drawbacks, for me, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Our house is full of books - we have at least one large, full bookcase in every room and no space for more book storage. As a family of four, we have collected just over 500 e-books since we bought our first Kindle; as paper books, these would fill at least two floor-to-ceiling-height bookcases.

That brings me to another advantage of Kindle books. Although we can't lend them out or give them away, as a family sharing the same Amazon account, we all have access to each other's books through our Kindles and we can read them at the same time, should we wish to.

Kindle books are generally cheaper than paper books and are sometimes free. Many of the older classics can be downloaded free from Amazon. Free e-books can also be downloaded from the Project Gutenberg website as well as from Internet Archive. Amazon runs regular offers on Kindle books and books that would normally cost a few pounds can often be bought for under a pound on a particular day or during a particular month. Even Kindle books purchased at their full price are nearly always a pound or two cheaper than their paperback equivalent.

Have you ever been reading a novel and encountered a character whose name you recognise but can't remember how they relate to other characters or to the plot in general? When reading a Kindle book, you can search back through the book to find past references to that character and remind yourself how they fit into the story. The search facility is also useful if you want find a quote from a book. As well as being searchable, Kindle books can be highlighted or annotated, without permanently defacing the book.

If you find a word you don't know, on the Kindle Fire, you can touch that word and immediately obtain a dictionary definition - this is much quicker and less disruptive to the reading process than looking the word up in a paper dictionary.

On a Kindle, you can alter the print size from very small through to very large, which is really useful if you struggle to read small print. You can also change the font, the line spacing, and the background colour.

It can certainly be argued that e-books are more environmentally friendly than paper ones. Taking the average weight of a paperback book as 440g (Source: Ask), 500 paperbacks weigh about 220kg. That's quite a lot of paper.