How Do You Prefer to Read Books?

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Feel free to elaborate why you prefer your chosen style.
 
I do both. There’s a lot to be said for ebooks – price, no bookshelf space, so easily portable. But there are some, especially when it comes to religion, that I just want to have on paper.
 
Both. I like being able to bookmark multiple pages in an e-book, being able to highlight and save certain passages and being able to see them all pretty easily, the ability to highlight a word and get its definition, and being able to adjust the font, text size, lighting, and background. Plus, the e-books are usually less costly than a paper book. With amazon family settings, you can “share” a book and not worry about never getting it back.

But for favorites, or larger references, Bibles, etc., I still prefer a hard copy.
 
If a book is not available in physical form, I will read on the computer or smartphone, HOWEVER, I much, MUCH prefer a physical book.
 
Irishmom2 said:
I don’t enjoy scrolling or swiping or reading a screen, it just feels different.
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Ditto that. Also, if the power goes out, I can’t charge my phone or computer to read an ebook. I have lights that take batteries and candles I can use to read physical books. Even if you have a portable charger, the charger can go dead after a while.
 
Ebooks are incredibly convenient (I have a Catholic library-in-an-app in iPieta alone!) but I love real books. They are so much easier to highlight or put notes into (ebooks are fidgety for that and the colors not so nice!), and you can tell where you are and remember where parts are so much more easily.

Plus, I don’t think screen time is all that good for the eyes!
 
I like physical books. There are no moving parts and they require no electricity.😜
 
Reading a whole book, from cover to cover, on a screen is something I don’t really have the patience for. I’ll do it if there’s no alternative, but only if it’s a book I feel I really must read. On the other hand, looking things up in reference books, or looking to check, say, the exact words of something I want to quote – those are things that, on the whole, I would normally opt to do on a screen.
 
Both. I stopped buying books some years ago, but am a frequent library user. Thanks God for online library borrowing and my iPad mini right now!
 
Like others, I prefer a paper book 9 times out of ten. The big advantage is if there are a lot of technical words or quotes in other languages there’s a inbuilt dictionary to help. That and the price.
I see it as kind of like coffee. Ebooks are like instant coffee. Do the job with no fuss but lacking something of the experience of a proper one. But I wouldn’t turn my nose up at either if I’m offered one.
 
fredystairs said:
I like physical books. There are no moving parts and they require no electricity.
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I think you put your finger on it. When you’re reading a book on a screen, you can’t forget for a moment that you’re operating a machine. It isn’t relaxing. It’s the opposite. Operating the machine prevents you from giving your undivided attention to the book you’re trying to read.
 
Physical books… end of story. (No pun intended).

Ebooks can be helpful in the go. iBreviary can be especially helpful for getting my prayers done on the road. But is it my preference? No.
 
I prefer real books. I do not like “e books” but I am a huge fan of the Audible service. Right now I am listening to a book by Henri Nouwen that he is reading. Is is incredible to hear his words in his voice. 💜
 
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My reading has been exclusively on my computer for about a year…my eyes, even with corrective lenses aren’t what they used to be, and if it weren’t for the ability to adjust backlighting and font size I probably wouldn’t be able to do much reading.
 
I am almost 100% ereader. I have kindle unlimited and I read about 2 to 3 books per week.
 
Both. I truly love the physical books, the smell of books, the sound of pages turning, etc. I have always lived in a family who accumulated books by the cartload, rooms full of books, bookcases in every single room, etc.

But one gets older. And books get more and more expensive. Libraries are great but in the last couple of months it’s been a lot harder to get access to physical books, right?

In our last move (when we realized we had managed to move to a teeny 2 bed apartment with only a kitchen and itty living room and bath and yet somehow we have over 600 books —physical books, and that was AFTER ruthlessly assigning at least as many more among family members) my mom said NO MORE BOOKS.

So what could I do? I had to get a Kindle.

The Kindle has the Whole Harvard Classics 51 volume set my grandpa had (which the family parceled out in 10ths). Now I have the whole set to read! I have the Douay Rheims, the Didache, the Summa, books of Pope St. John Paul 2, Pope Benedict, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, the Lord of the Rings, The Lord of the World, the Brontes, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Winston Churchill, etc. etc. I’m a happy lady. So I go from one to the other; one day holding the dusky purple bound copy of Henry Morton Robinson’s “The Cardinal”; another day with the Kindle and “Two Years before the Mast”, another day back to the Kindle and Cardinal Sarah’s “God or Nothing”, another day with my dog-eared copy of C. S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”.

Whether I am flicking a ‘real’ page or scrolling the Kindle,

It’s a BOOK.
Bliss.
 
BartholomewB said:
When you’re reading a book on a screen, you can’t forget for a moment that you’re operating a machine. It isn’t relaxing. It’s the opposite. Operating the machine prevents you from giving your undivided attention to the book you’re trying to read.
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That’s not the case for me at all. Maybe because I’ve been reading ebooks for so long. I especially like being able to just touch the edge of the screen, and there’s the next page.
 
Physical for canonical world literature (including non-fiction), and e-books for pop lit, some references, etc.
 
BartholomewB said:
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fredystairs:
I like physical books. There are no moving parts and they require no electricity.
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I think you put your finger on it. When you’re reading a book on a screen, you can’t forget for a moment that you’re operating a machine. It isn’t relaxing. It’s the opposite. Operating the machine prevents you from giving your undivided attention to the book you’re trying to read.
Click to expand...
BINGO! That’s why it’s physical books only, for me.
 
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