(no subject)
Tell me about e-books and kindles and things! I had no desire for one at all until I saw darcydodo 's kindle when she was visiting a few weeks ago. I assumed that it would be nasty to read too much on screen and that it would be fairly heavy but actually neither was the case and now I have gadget lust!
Mostly, I'll stick with physical books - as I mostly get things from the library - but I was particularly pondering it for travel purposes. I read very quickly (can read a light novel in an hour and a half, for instance) and it makes things like transatlantic travel really annoying. If I'm going all the way to Phoenix, for instance, I need around 20 books for preference - 6 for the way out, 6 for the way back, 6 for while I'm there and I always for some reason take an irrational dislike to two books that I bring and don't read them so I need a two book buffer zone.
I'm a bit worried, though, by the prices on the Amazon Kindle store thing - it all seems quite pricey for the purposes that I'm looking at this for. I mean, largely, I'd be reading these things only once on a flight and quite often I'd want to reread something that I already own, so paying £4 a time for something that I'll go through in a couple of hours seems a bit expensive. I see, for instance, that PG Woodhouse novels are around £4-5 on there. I'm probably slightly startled by the prices just because I rarely buy new books - I never used to have the money so I got into the habit of borrowing them from libraries and then there's Bookmooch as well - and so I'm not used to it. But, based on those prices, it would cost me around £80 to buy enough books for a trip to the States and I'm not sure if I want to spend that much on not having to carry 20 books around.
So, my main question is: those of you who have e-book readers of various varieties, are you able to find cheap/free (legal) e-books easily? And, also, just generally how useful to you find it to have an e-book reader? And which one in particular would you recommend?
I'm not looking to buy one right away, I'll probably wait until my next trip to the States (May), and I may not buy one at all - still slightly on the fence!
Mostly, I'll stick with physical books - as I mostly get things from the library - but I was particularly pondering it for travel purposes. I read very quickly (can read a light novel in an hour and a half, for instance) and it makes things like transatlantic travel really annoying. If I'm going all the way to Phoenix, for instance, I need around 20 books for preference - 6 for the way out, 6 for the way back, 6 for while I'm there and I always for some reason take an irrational dislike to two books that I bring and don't read them so I need a two book buffer zone.
I'm a bit worried, though, by the prices on the Amazon Kindle store thing - it all seems quite pricey for the purposes that I'm looking at this for. I mean, largely, I'd be reading these things only once on a flight and quite often I'd want to reread something that I already own, so paying £4 a time for something that I'll go through in a couple of hours seems a bit expensive. I see, for instance, that PG Woodhouse novels are around £4-5 on there. I'm probably slightly startled by the prices just because I rarely buy new books - I never used to have the money so I got into the habit of borrowing them from libraries and then there's Bookmooch as well - and so I'm not used to it. But, based on those prices, it would cost me around £80 to buy enough books for a trip to the States and I'm not sure if I want to spend that much on not having to carry 20 books around.
So, my main question is: those of you who have e-book readers of various varieties, are you able to find cheap/free (legal) e-books easily? And, also, just generally how useful to you find it to have an e-book reader? And which one in particular would you recommend?
I'm not looking to buy one right away, I'll probably wait until my next trip to the States (May), and I may not buy one at all - still slightly on the fence!