There. I said it. I hate e-books.
I feel like my acceptance of new technology has sort of assymptoted to a dead, flat-line. The curve started high: I was programming in GW-Basic at seven, I was on the robotics team in high school, but somewhere around university, I just stopped caring. I got my first cellphone in 2009. I’ve had the same computer for three years. I am two consoles behind at this point (PS2). And I don’t mind at all.
I have an iPad. I did not pay for the iPad (living the dream as Moss would say) but got it in a barter. The first apps I put on it were kobo and kindle. I got some e-books with a gift certificate I got at my old job before I quit for having organized an awesome conference. I downloaded a bunch of Project Gutenberg classics to make myself more intelligent.
And then I started reading e-books on the iPad and realized how much I hate them.
It doesn’t help that the kobo app kept freezing. It doesn’t help that you can’t easily search in books downloaded from overdrive, which is the New Brunswick library’s e-book system. It also doesn’t help that the New Brunswick library’s e-book system is much like the New Brunswick library – as much Ted Dekker and Harlan Coben and Mary Higgins Clark as you can get your hands on, and those are not books that interest me. It doesn’t help that the iPad I have is heavy and hurts my wrists when I hold it. It doesn’t help that the screen doesn’t have all that fancy stuff that the kobo is always advertising – like true ink or whatever they call it – and I get a headache staring at the screen for too long. Also, e-books drain the battery quickly it seems, even though I change it to a black background and dim the screen. So I have to plug-in the iPad while I’m reading which defeats the purpose of reading anywhere.
But mostly, it doesn’t help that many of the e-books I’ve read, a lot that I’ve gotten to review from librarything are also not my style, so now when I start reading anything, I can’t get over the prejudice I have that anyone can publish an e-book and I don’t want to read anyone – I want to read good, meaningful, deep stories that dig me out from the inside. I have read three-ish good e-books on the iPad – I Am Forbidden, HHhH, and I am half-way through Little Children, so good books exist in e-book form I tell myself. I force myself to read slowly and not skim.
But I still hate it.
I like paperback novels. I even like the words paperback novel. I have a goal to write a book and call it Paperback Novel. I have no goal to write an e-book, even though that is the way publishing is going, even though when I’m finished my course and have firmly established (actually, I’ve firmly established it now, but will pretend that there is some submission that I will send to my course mentor that she will suddenly see all the pieces coming together and be impressed with me and that will give me the push to keep going to the end of April) that Come From Away should just die a quiet e-book death, I do not want an e-book only world. Radio still exists for people in cars. Maybe books can still exist for people with spotty electricity. Maybe I should get an axe and chop down some power lines in my neighbourhood to ensure spotty electricity.
I like folding down corners of pages and used book sales and the little interaction I get from the disgruntled town librarian. I’m not ready to give that up yet.
Maybe an actual e-reader would help? But then I’m tied to a platform. Is there an open-source e-reader? Doubtful. And paying to have a platform to read books on? So strange. Maybe an e-reader will fall out of the sky. Maybe I should just get over my disgust of iPad reading and just go for it. Maybe maybe maybe. I don’t know.
I think I like paper just a little too much.