10 Reasons to Hate the Kindles

[Dave Rosenthal]

1. You can't leave it lying on your beach towel when you doze off at Ocean City.

2. Beautiful Russian ballerinas won't introduce themselves upon noticing your copy of Secrets of Nijinsky.

3. Striking cover art such as the gothic drawings on Lauren Groff's books can't be appreciated.

4. All books are the same in Kindleworld. You lose the heft of Guns, Germs and Steel and the spriteliness of a poetry collection like Elizabeth Spires' The Wave-Maker.

5. I can't use my collection of random bookmarks: a ticket from the Paris metro, an Orioles game stub or a museum pass.

6. The DK and National Geographic books aren't made for electrons. Or do they make a coffee-table-size Kindle?

7. The battery never dies on my paperback of The Big Sleep.

8. I can't bear to part with my stacked, covered bookcase.

9. If I hate what I'm reading, I can't throw it across the room.

10. (This space intentionally left blank -- for your own reason)

[Harvee Lau]

You can't feel the texture of paper when you go from page to page, and you can't track how far you are along in the book by the location of the bookmark between the pages. At the beach, you don't have the pleasure of dusting off the sand from inbetween the pages. At home, you can't be proud of leaving your new book intact - without water marks, coffee stains, or teeth marks from the dog. There is more.....

[Trish Collins]

I don't hate the Kindle anymore. I've decided it would be a good supplement to the books I already read. Specifically, I'd like an e-reader to read books for my book club (though, unfortunately, not all books are available as e-books, such as Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, which my group is discussing tonight). The e-readers are very slick when you want to refer back to something. Also, when I go on vacation, I pack SO MANY BOOKS, way more than I could ever read, and I think an e-reader would be ideal in a situation like that. You could bring 10 or 20 or however many books you wanted with you, all for the weight of the e-reader.

I'm just saying I think the e-readers will eventually make a nice supplement for those of us who are rabid readers. Will it replace books? Not at all. At this point, e-books account for around 1% of book sales, maybe a little less. Obviously, at this point, e-books are not what is threatening the publishing industry.

[drey]

Ditto. I travel with books. And then I buy more, because I've read the books I brought with. Which means I now have to pack MORE books. An e-reader would help out tremendously in this scenario!

[Book Calendar]

I am not going to get a Kindle because if you compare it to a smart phone it is not a very good deal. If I get an Iphone for example, I can get the Stanza ereading software and get a phone, a web browser, a gps system, a music player, a video player, and a million other features for the same price. It is not worth it.

[Angie]

A kindle doesn't have that wonderful paper smell that books have.

[Alexis Lennert]

i totally agree, my brothers and friends think I'm weird because i like to smell a book when i pick it up.they just don't get it.

[Callista]

Those are good reasons. The first one especially. I don't worry to much about leaving books lying around where as no one in their right mind would leave an expensive device lying around. Some of the reasons others gave are good too. To me a Kindle or any other reading device is too much like watching tv. I read to get away from the screen.

[John]

10 reasons I love my Kindle :)

1 - I can carry my whole library every place I go and it doesn't put out my bad back.

2- Books are a lot less expensive so I can read more .... and more ...and more.

3- Chicks are curious to find out what it is when they see me with this new toy.

4- No one knows what I'm reading and some times I really don't want them to know : )

5 - You can impress other guys with your new technology that they probably don't have.

6 - no one can borrow it and forget to return it like so many of my books.

7 - next time I move I won't 150 heavy book boxes or more to pay big hairy guys to carry out and charge me for their labor.

8 - It gives me something to bitch about and or praise depending on my moods :)

9 - You can look intelligent when people don't know what a Kindle is.

10 - Oprah has one and women watch Oprah, and I watch women : )

[John]

Oh ya I forgot, if I didn't have a Kindle, I wouldn't have found the book Betrayal by C.D. Nolan, because I would have thought it was a chick only book. It really left an impact on me lately.....haven't had that impact since I read Dan Brown, Angels and Deamons and The Divinici code...........lookiing for a new impacting book : )

[Rikki]

Totally agree with John, except for # 3. I couldn't care less about the chicks, :-).

Other than that he is right. I always thought I'd hate ebooks, but meanwhile I love them. I haven't got a Kindle (they don't sell them here), but a sony and love it.

[Insert Book Title]

You can't feel the weight of it in your hands. I don't know. There is something about holding a book that I just love...even if I'm not reading it.

[Kay]

10 (actually the first and foremost reason for me to not ever get a Kindle): it can only read books in its proprietary format. As it is (I am a huge fan of ebooks) and I bought an EEEPC. It is indeed larger than a Kindle but I can read anything I want (.pdf, .doc, .txt) on it.