The concept of ebooks is great. I'm currently reading a 4 inch thick Dicken's novel, and I'd love to have a slimmer way to carry that around. The execution is what's terrible.
You know, you can get an awful lot of those out-of-copyright novels (e.g. Dickens)....for free (e.g. Gutenberg Project) on almost any reader/tablet/laptop/desktop. You can back them up or load them via cable to computer.
Even Amazon hasn't blocked that (yet?) and they are far from the only game in town.
They work (typically awkwardly) with a small subset of library collections.
The screens have improved, the prices dropped and for those of us with increasingly weak vision, they can be a godsend.
They have obvious ways they need to improve but:
I believe they are well worthwhile now for Gutenberg books, non-keeper textbooks, big thick manuals and cheapo read-once books and that opens up shelf space for keepers.
eBooks weren't as great for me as I hoped. I wanted to read books in French without paying the colossal shipping from Canada or France, but there's hardly any availability for Kindle. My peculiar niche market is not catered to. I can get classics, like @8 said, but I don't want Jules Verne, I want the modern stuff.
@4, I feel you. I'm currently halfway through "Master of the Senate" (1232 pages), and recently finished "Lone Star Rising" (more than 800), and both of those were crushing my chest when I tried to read them in bed. I guess I'm not as tough as I used to be. I switched to Kindle. You can get a lot of Kindle (and other ebook formats) out of the library now.
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2012/bre…
The concept of ebooks is great. I'm currently reading a 4 inch thick Dicken's novel, and I'd love to have a slimmer way to carry that around. The execution is what's terrible.
Even Amazon hasn't blocked that (yet?) and they are far from the only game in town.
They work (typically awkwardly) with a small subset of library collections.
The screens have improved, the prices dropped and for those of us with increasingly weak vision, they can be a godsend.
They have obvious ways they need to improve but:
I believe they are well worthwhile now for Gutenberg books, non-keeper textbooks, big thick manuals and cheapo read-once books and that opens up shelf space for keepers.
seems to have free versions of all Charles Dickens' work including the obscure.
Because of their connection to libraries, and other sources, openlibrary.org also carries free versions of many modern books, as well.
This have available all the books of this version..