Electronic Readers

Drew Loiselle

The way that people looks have books has changed a lot over the past ten years or so. When I was little, you couldn’t use the internet to find out information that quickly, and I was often forced to go to printed sources from the school library to find out information. These books are one of the last things that have seemed to make the transition to an electronic form. In the book, The Shallows, by Nicholas Carr, he states that,”You can take a book to the beach without worrying about sand getting in its works. You can take it to bed without being nervous about it falling to the floor should you nod off. You can spill coffee on it. You can sit on it.”(Carr 99). This quote is showing us all the advantages to a real book, and after considering all of these things, why would you ever buy an electronic E-reader? 

Although books are very easy to read, and always have the information that you are looking for, people have been getting more into the electronic side of them over the past few years. With an electronic reader, you can hold numerous books in one little tablet, which makes for a lot less lost books and clutter around your house. You can also read them in the dark, because most of the readers these days have dim back lights that can allow you to read without any lights at all. Another really cool thing about these readers is that most of them can connect to the internet, so you can get new books no matter where you are. 

I agree with Carr that regular books are better than the electronic ones. With a normal book, I never have to worry about whether it has a charge, or if it will die midway through a book. The only reason that I have ever bought an electronic book is because they generally run cheaper, and I needed to save some money on textbooks for school. Real books also do not hurt your eyes, and I feel as if I could read them all day and have nothing to worry about. With the electronic screens, they can sometimes hurt your eyes after a long time of using them. I sometimes find that if I use my laptop too much in class, that my eyes will hurt, so I am assuming the same would happen with an electronic reader. Overall, I agree with Carr, that normal paper books are better than electronic ones ever will be.