Viewing Thread:
"Does anyone read books?"

Might you be tempted to spend £199 tomorrow with the launch of the Sony Reader? It's just like Amazons Kindle (which we still dont have). It can store up to 160 ebooks and even plays mp3s.

I think my mum count use one as she's always having problems reading small print books and this allows you to increase the text size.

Garin wrote:
> Children shouldnt have to abandon their native tongues to learn
> or read books. This is where electronic devices are going to be
> alot more help than any number of used copies of The Da Vinci
> code.

I wouldn't know about that, having downloaded the Da Vinci code as an audiobook (which says a lot about my attitude towards reading).

XO & Classmate already have ebook modes. And the XO2 looks like an ebook reader more than a laptop now as it uses touch screens and they want the unit cost down to $75.

Also we already give a crap load of books to third world countries through programmes like books for africa. And where as it helps, its not the answer especially for education purposes. Children shouldnt have to abandon their native tongues to learn or read books. This is where electronic devices are going to be alot more help than any number of used copies of The Da Vinci code.

The flip side of that is the increased mining of iron ores to produce the electronic devices though. $50 still seems an excessive amount for LEDCs to pay, especially when that's unlikely to include many/any books and schools out in countries without the GDP we take for granted don't have the facilities to just download more, especially at a cost for each download for individual students.

Obviously the scheme could be tweaked to work for poorer schools but there's a much higher base value per unit, which wouldn't drop below $20 dollars whereas free books aren't considered an expensive exercise to distribute, especially considering people are happy to give away their existing books once they've been read a few times. Westernised ideals of making everything as easy as possible, and space-minimizing don't seem to be the best ideals to apply to a product they'd intend to ship out to countries struggling even to afford books, as the price of the unit's production alone when compared to bound books doesn't seem to make it a feasible task

As they only use electricity to turn the pages I think you could charge it with clockworks :) They've tried selling laptops for $100 to third world countries so why not $50 readers.

Obviously kids books will still be made, but I wouldnt be surprised if the book industry goes the same way as the music industry. Digital. Garin would agree with me, as it would mean millions of trees wouldnt have to be cut down.

Machie wrote:

> Itd be great if the price came down and then we could send a
> bunch to third world countries where they could be used in
> schools as text books.

The machines? How would they afford the batteries and be able to recharge them?

The books which currently take up too much space could be sent over to less economically developed countries if a lot of people upgraded to these things, that much is true

But imagine having every bookshelf in the house empty, and all filed on a hard disk. I mean what would happen to books for Kids? Or books like the Guinness Book of World Records if everything eventually became a file for this machine? It'd mean Kids were nearly permanently staring at screens and the GBoWR would just be like a webpage. Plus there'd be so much space I'd be unsure what to fill it with, the shelves I mean. Fair enough there's usually too little space but there's only so much that can be moved onto shelves/ into shelf spaces

Come on guys I love books too but I can think of plenty of reasons why these are a good thing :)

I have 7 harry potter books that I dont know where to put/hide. Books take up so much space, wouldnt it be easier to have them all on a memory stick?

Itd be great if the price came down and then we could send a bunch to third world countries where they could be used in schools as text books.

What I've got through recently:

The Elizabethan Deliverance
Journal of an Afghan Prisoner
Restoration London
Crime and Punishment
The Eagle has Flown (A mistake)
The Fields of War
Goodbye to All That
The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

...and I can imagine one or two more before going back to uni, as I have nothing much to do.

At least Carrie's War isn't the contorted 18th Century language

I'd love to read more but i dont have the attention span for it and my collection of unread books is growing longer. Started Delta of Venus(Anais Nin) and stopped because it's "dodgy", started Human All To Human by Nietzsche and never went back to it, started The Diary of Anais Nin 1931-1934, next on my list of books to read (and probably never finish) is Le Mythe de Sisyphe by Camus and i'm also interested in Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle.

Alfonse the Turtle wrote:
> I'm reading Pride and Prejudice right now!
>
> Quite possibly the worst book of all time =(

I think I can trump you with Carrie's War, seriously, who chooses these books for study?