Unwrapping: To Love My Ereader or Not To Love My Ereader, That is the Question!

Mine's like the one in front but lives in a red case now.

I received a Kobo Touch ereader as a Christmas gift from my dear hubby. He's been using a Kobo ereader for the past year and I assume he loves it since he reads on it constantly. It goes everywhere with him. My dh is a prolific reader, usually 2 or 3 books at a time which I've never been able to do since I just get too involved in the story to switch back and forth. I thought he would miss doing this with the e-reader but then I discovered that he had a couple of books in process on his ereader.
So does this mean that a person's reading habits won't change at all with the use of an e-reader? I suppose for him it hasn't but I've been thinking about my own.

I love books. I love the look of them, the smell of them, the feel of them in my hands. I like seeing them line the shelves with all their colors and variety of titles. I like organizing them by genre, by series, and by alphabetical order - yes, I do that! The more organized my books are the easier it is for me to find a particular one that I might be seeking. And yes, I do seek them out after they go on the shelves because I'm a consummate re-reader of books.

So far, I've only really read some previews on my new ereader. Oh yes, it's one of the things I do love about my new ereader. I can get previews! And we're not talking just a blurb but usually a prologue (if there is one) and the entire first chapter! How great is that?

It took me a while to figure out how to use the blasted thing since it was quite different than the model that my dh uses and is operated almost completely by touching the screen. It's kind of cool, actually, at least when I want to turn a page - I just tap the side of the page on the right to turn to the next, tap the left side to return to the previous page. That brings me to something that I'm NOT really loving about my ereader.

I'm the type of reader who tends to travel through a book - that is, that while I'm reading I may or may not desire to go back to a previous chapter or page to reread something that I've been reminded of while reading the current page. I've found many a discrepancy in a book by doing so. I've always had a very good memory for what I read or at least I used to ... now I find myself going back to check if something actually happened or was said. [sigh] One of the curses of getting older. Anyway, back to my point - when I wish to go back in a print book, I thumb the pages back to where I think I read it, do a little skimming search with my eyes and bingo, find it, read it and happily go back to where I was. Not so easy with the ereader!

If I wish to go back, I have to tap and tap and tap and tap, in ad nauseam, until I find the page I might have seen it on. If that's an annoyance in a preview, what's it going to be like when I'm, say two hundred pages into a book and want to check something in the second chapter? I suppose there's possibly some setting to make it easier to do such a thing but I haven't found it yet and it's just this sort of thing, the complexity of using an ereader that I'm not loving at all. A book is simple. It's easy to use - you pick it up, you open the beautiful, IN COLOR, cover and read the words.

Missing that lovely blue!

Not loving too much that the covers are in black and white either - yes, I know there's a model that is in color but all I want an ereader to do is let me read a book not all the other bells and whistles. Not loving the format of the text either but I suppose I can get used to both.

Reading on an ereader reminds me of when I was younger, when paperbacks were made so tough that you could bend the spine and fold the book back against itself. I hated when people did that to my books but I saw a lot of folks doing it with theirs. I've always been kind to my books because if it's a good one, I'm going to keep it and re-read it many, many times again.

I do get a kick out of the way it bookmarks where I quit reading though ... it dog ears the corner just the way I was guilty of doing when I was younger and didn't use bookmarks. Hey, what's going to happen to all the lovely bookmarks if no one reads real books anymore? Hmm ... I suppose I could run ornament hooks through them and hang them on a tree. That's it, I'll design a reading tree for all my lovely bookmarks. Awww, so sad for I truly will miss my bookmarks.

My Home Page shows
me my book titles, pretty cool!

So what is the answer? To love it or not to love it? I suppose there's good and bad with any new technology. I do have to say that I'm quite excited at the prospect of going on my next vacation and not having to worry about forgetting a book I want to read because I plan to have them already loaded on my fully-charged ereader.  Did I tell you they even give you recommendations based on your reading habits - WooHoo!

So to those of you with ereaders, I'm curious - what's your relationship with the gadget? Do you love it? Do you hate it? Or do you plan to do as I'm going to do for a long while - switch back and forth between it and print books? Just received 3 new books from Amazon today and can't wait to get my hands on them. I'm not ready to completely give up my addiction to print books and all those glorious covers. How about you?


Happy Reading Everyone!