E-Books are real books, and they're okay

Today, I was reading a book and in the text, they referenced something they had said on a previous page. It had taken me a while to get back into reading this book, so I clicked on the page number and it took me back to the page in question so I could reread that part.

Then they referenced an additional audio file to supplement part of the book available on their website, and I clicked on that. I called up the audio file and played it right then and there, before returning to my book.

My mom has a crafting book with embedded videos that display the steps that people might have trouble with. When I have trouble reading a book because my eyes are tired, I can just increase the font size, change the contrast, or adjust the brightness.

On top of all of that, most of the books I have bought lately were ones that were on one day only sales, or temporary specials. The ability of a publisher or author to incrementally adjust the price of their books, and see the response that price adjustment brings them in sales and profits, is changing the entire face of publishing and probably for the better for consumers in the long run (if it helps authors, I don't know yet). The Nook Free Friday books are often books by authors who are releasing something new, so they give away an older book or the first in the series and it works like a free sample at the grocery store.

I've written about this before, but it seems like it bears repeating since it's been almost a year that I've had my Nook. Now I can get books from the library without leaving my house, including audiobooks.

It intrigues me that since the printing press, we haven't really revolutionized how we process the written word. We've changed the sales process, we've definitely changed what's popular and what gets printed. But we haven't really had something quite as revolutionary. And e-books are actually fundamentally changing how we process stories AND how we sell them.

Are there drawbacks? Absolutely. Mostly because publishers are trying to cling to old models for profits and hurting authors in the process instead of embracing the change fully. But I'm really tired of book snobs.

People complain if you read the book after the movie, if you have an e-reader instead of buying hardcovers, if you have the wrong edition, if your paperback spine has cracks in it, and on and on. If you read too slowly, if you read too quickly, if you like to read the end first, if you like to read in order without spoiling yourself. Everybody wants to say "this is the way to read" "this is the way to enjoy books." Like there's only one way and only one thing.

That's stupid. Enjoy stories. That's all that's needed. Enjoy stories at your pace, in your way, and embrace yourself and your life with storytelling. And if anybody gives you grief about it know this: they aren't as good a reader as you if they insult others for being different.

Book Review - Battle Royale

I reviewed the film Battle Royale a while back, and after I watched it I really wanted to read the original novel. I had an eBook version, so a lot of my criticisms I had to pull back because I don't know if the formatting was messed up. I don't know what it is about eBooks but even ones I've bought recently have had some really screwed up formatting going on. There's also a challenge in reading a book that was originally written in another language. You can never tell if the problem you have is actually in the text or in the translation. Now, this is far from the first time I've read a translated book. The Ring cycle by Koji Suzuki are some of my favorite books. But it doesn't seem like Viz really spent a lot of time on the translation of Battle Royale.

There are plenty of pros to the book version over the manga or the film. There's a lot more story so that it's easier to actually believe the character development and the time frame for everything. Some of the characters are better established and more interesting. Especially when it comes to the main three characters.

The problem is that the characterizations of the villains and their motivations are very, very weak. Both of those villains were better fleshed out or treated in more interesting ways through other iterations of the story.

But the problem was that the writing style was very pulp, which is what lead me to wonder about the translation. It just felt unrefined and a little weak. I know that the original novel wasn't really fancy literature, but this felt even a little more unrefined than I expected. The reading level was just a little low, and that made it less fun to read. Not that it's a particularly fun to read a story about the brutal murder of teenagers by their classmates, but you get my point.

The other problem was that the story was very basic when it came to talking about the characters, or their motivations, or even feelings. But whenever there was a gun involved, it suddenly got very detailed and started sounding like a manual. It's one thing to be concerned about getting the details right but this is over the top.

Overall, I've already talked about the story itself and what I think of it, and it still holds up in the novel. But of the three versions of the story, I'm not sure it's the strongest. Despite the excessive gore and disturbing nature of it, I'd say the manga is probably the strongest version, but the movie and book would be up to personal opinion.

There is no such thing as a "real" book

Way, way back in 2006 or so, the bookstore where I worked started selling e-readers. I think it was a Sony e-reader, and they tried to make this big push out of it because the store itself was failing (as in they've gone bankrupt and no longer exist, the writing was on the wall even then) and they thought something new and shiny would actually help.

It was almost instant how quickly the "real" books vs. e-books debate started. And at first, part of me was on the "real" books side. But I kept getting drawn back to this e-reader on display, and looking at it. The thing is, I started reading random walls of text online when I was 13, and fanfiction became a big part of my life around 1998 or so. So the idea of reading on a screen wasn't foreign to me. I still recognized some limitations (I don't learn as well reading academic material on a computer instead of on paper, for example) but in general I thought the idea had merit.

But I still held on to this "real" books thing, possibly out of stubbornness. This idea that only if you love physical books could you be a "reader" and that it was a huge house full of book that defined a person. Which was also evident if you went into my guest room, where my bookshelves were, because they filled an entire wall, largely double-rowed, and with extra stacks all over the place.

It took a long time for me to get out of that mode, and I think one of the things that did it for me was traveling a lot. Even for something as simple as going home to visit my parents, I would always pack a book or two with me. Usually two because I wouldn't know what I would be in the mood to read.

Then I started flying around the country to work on my latest film project, and during a trip to Las Vegas last year I only packed one book because I was trying to pack light and I had all this camera equipment. Of course, I ended up finishing my book on the plane to Vegas and spent three days looking around for a bookstore so I would have something to read on the way home.

On top of that, I started noticing a lot of the really great features that technology could bring to reading. I've never been a person who writes in books, it seems disrespectful to me. But an electronic book? I can bookmark favorite pages, highlight quotes I like, write notes in the margins if I felt like. In short, I could do all the things I may have always wanted without any actual lasting damage to the book itself.

On top of that, I could carry hundreds of books, for any mood I might be in, with less weight than a hard cover. Not to mention being able to change the size of the text, the contrast of the letters, and other things that started to make reading more accessible.

It also helped that around this same time the newer generation of e-readers was coming out. They were quickly and efficiently solving a lot of the problems the earliest devices had. Every time a new one is released they add more features that are making books more and more amazing. Children's books that can read aloud to kids or help them learn to read as they go. The ease of jumping back and forth between footnotes and the text (a must if you're reading a Mary Roach book).

So to cling to the idea that a physical printed page is the only thing that counts as a real book is just stubbornness. Yes, it's a different experience. And yes, I still own a wall of books (though they're no longer double-rowed and stacked everywhere, my rule is they must fit on the bookshelves I have, so if I get new books I need to let go of old ones I never reread). Books on paper won't go away any time soon, though bookstores might.

And that is sad, browsing a website is no substitute to browsing a bookshelf for me. It doesn't lead to as many new and weird discoveries.

But I think people who love books and who love reading need to start looking at everything that e-books have to offer us. They're were never designed to somehow steal our books from us, they were designed to give our books to us more easily, to give us a new experience with them, and to help us stop breaking our backs carrying around everything we might want to read at a given time.

E-books are real books. And we can live in a world with both.

This post may or may not have been brought to you by the fact that I got a Nook for my birthday and I've already realized how easy it is to indulge my love of books and getting new/free/bargain books without also ending up with them taking over my guest room.