Why I love ebooks and the other, non-electronic kind too

I own about a thousand books that are all in storage and six that are not.

I own a refurbed Sony Reader Pocket Edition that I bought for something like $100 on Woot last year and it may be one of my favorite things ever. Of course, I still love real books, and like most people, enjoying reading them almost as much as I enjoying showing them off on my shelves.

Still, I love both and for different reasons. Though most people are quick to turn up their nose at the idea of electronic books, eReaders combine the whole “reading is sexy” thing with gadget fetishism, plus like, a gillion awesome, illegally-downloaded science fiction books from internet. And for someone who travels even a moderate amount, it’s crazy convenient. I’ve got 105 books on my Sony Reader, one of which was even checked out from the library because the Seattle Public Library is hip like that and checks out ebooks.

Note: Another (highly peripheral) perk to owning ebooks is the deep satisfaction you get from cataloging and tagging all your ebooks, which is what I stayed up until 2 am last night doing. Turns out I have four times as many books tagged with magic (12 books) as I do with space opera (3 books). The more you know!

And if you’re wondering, in my opinion, it doesn’t matter which device you get. Mine reads .pdfs and .epubs and I haven’t had any trouble finding books in either of those formats, and like I mentioned before, I can even check stuff out from library. It doesn’t have WiFi, it doesn’t have a touch screen, and it doesn’t have color, and frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.

	Books in real life	ebooks
Pros	– Smell good  – Underline words, write in margins, and dog-ear pages to your heart’s content – Owning lots of books makes you look really smart and crap – Books are fun	– Thousands of illegally-downloaded ebooks online for free!  – Hand’s-free reading – never have to come up with creative ways to hold your paperback open again – Can store hundreds of books on a single device – Electronics are fun
Cons	– Papercuts hurt!  – Expensive – Suddenly become the biggest pain ever when it comes time to move	– No sense of progress as you read  – “ebooks” is like, the gooberiest name for anything ever – You totally look like a nerd reading one