Myself and Mrs Jimbob have a collection of several thousand books, which i'm currently moving from the spare bedroom to my freshly built library (glorified cupboard).

Yesterday we had guests, a nice couple whom we've known for quite a few years but who were just visiting us in the "new" cottage for the first time.

All was going rather well, until after tea i went back to building the new shelving system for the aforementioned library and Mr Guest came through to help, passing me screws, spirit level etc...

We were talking about the weather, cars, sports, generally catching up, when inevitably came the fatal question...

"You live in quite a small house now, isn't it about time you bought a kindle and binned all these fg books?"

I handled it remarkably well, i took a deep breath, counted to ten... then hit him with my lepidopterists encyclopedia.

So, my question is, does anyone, anywhere still value the weight, texture and simple joy of a real book anymore?

Or have myself and Mrs jimbob become some sort of freakishly specialised archaic hoarders who should, as so often suggested, bin or donate our books?

What do you folk do?

It's not often I read a book these days, due to my working hours and being on here a lot.

I tend to only be able to read a couple of pages before falling asleep, so have given up now

For what it's worth though, I still prefer a 'proper' book

I've read three books this month while away with work. It would have been far simpler to have downloaded them on to my iPad to save the room and weight in my bag, but there's no replacement for a tactile, tangible tome.

Kindles are all well and good, and I'll admit to being tempted for travel, but there is something rather satisfying about a real book. Plus, for the reference type, you can't idly flick through a kindle.

And there you have it. I have three or four thousand books (oh how I regret the ones I had to lose when I last moved house - at least as many again) with publishing dates ranging from this year to the mid-1600's. I love the feel of a book and the smell of a book - but nonetheless I am in the process of moving the more ephemeral of them to electronic form...

This is for two reasons. The most obvious is that of space; but more subtly, many of the fiction books I treasure were printed on poor-quality 'pulp' paper in the nineteen twenties and thirties, and have decayed to the stage where a fold on a page becomes permanent and causes brittle fractures. Spines are also suffering; the binding glue has become brittle with age and pages can simply fall out.

That said: hardback and/or non-fiction does not translate well to book readers, largely due to the often-smaller screen than the original page and the lack of fidelity to the original colours, typeface, and layout, and I have no intention of copying such.

Equally, I have *no* plans to purchase any ebooks until the publishers realise that the ridiculous DRM systems in place are hurting them, not me: I object to being called a thief even by implication. (I discovered only this week that the official kobo desktop application will only display books on the PC which have been obtained through the kobo store and ignores any others on the device.)

But for travel? No argument. The kobo will work for a month and has at present nearly six hundred books on it. I have a weight and space limit, so when I get on a plane tonight it will be kobo in hand (even if I buy Robert Peston's latest tome on the state of the economy).

I would not have a kindle, nor a nook; I insist on something which will display a standard open format: epub. That way I can make my own ebooks from my own scans of books I own; damned if I'm going to pay again for books I already bought!

I love these new electronic books but I can't see myself owning one as I'd break it folding the corner over to save the page

We have 2 lifetimes collections of books at home.

Some of them are showing signs of age and will not bear too many more readings. The oldest is a copy of Historicae Brytannicae Defensio by Sir John Prise, published in 1573.
There are not many copies in existence, the Balliol College archives have a couple of versions

Our copy has a handwritten latin inscription by the author and varous hand annotations in the margins throughout the book which is the condition you would expect for a 439 year old paperback.

I have been tempted by the likes of Kindle, but I doubt that I will succomb. I prefer to turn a real page even if it is 600 year old technology.

We're blessed with around 80 bookshops of different types in Edinburgh, the second-hand outlets seeming to flourish in particular. A large bookcase in each of two rooms is all we have space for in a flat, apart from a music score collection which covers most of one wall nearly to ceiling height in my piano room. The inheritance from my parents years ago of a substantial collection of paperbacks and mathematical books [my mother was daft on this subject] caused an overload so sadly many of them had to be passed on or sold. It was then I discovered the interest of many self-effacing individuals, often in the trade, who had a fascination for one subject or another, and whose eyes would gleam when they alighted on something that appealed to them. And of course they all knew each other!
I have to admit I was sorry to see them go - I would probably have lined the walls of the hall with shelves for them but ah well, it's democratic here innit I expect the new owners will derive plenty of benefit from them - that's the purpose really, and that should win over mere possession value.

Reading? Only time I can really relax is on holiday otherwise I can't stay awake long enough!

Music scores are now available on a machine which sits on the music desk of a piano for example, and the pages are turned by a foot pedal. How the 'eck you can work all three pedals at once is beyond me But I wouldn't go near one, give me the good old hard copy anytime, the one which feels familiar and you can pencil in the fingering!

I don't read as much as I like to, or in deed used to. Books for me everytime. Until I go on holiday, then it's the Kindle.

I have a load of books on the Kindle some free, many not attainable easily anymore in paper form. But they all take up the space and weight of an A5 jiffy bag, so no weight penalty, a big advantage on package holidays. Also if I start a book and it's crap, I can just junk it without any worries about my library lasting the holiday!

I really like that particular piece of alliteration, Couldn't have put it better myself.



I'm glad you said that, i mentioned the smell of a book in my original post, then edited it out for fear of appearing to be too much of a book fetishist.



I understand why you wish to preserve these particular books before they deteriorate further, but to me a book with no hint of scoliosis is the equivalent of a Fiat Coupe with under 6000 miles on the clock.



I must admit to a frankly embarrassing level of naievety here, in that i never realised ebooks were DRM protected. Does that mean that a novel downloaded on my kindle (were i to purchase one) couldn't be shared with mrs jimbob on hers?



If you were to do that to a book in my house, you would be stoned! (and not in the good way )


petep, all i can say is; You lucky, lucky man.



I've seen these, what on earth was the reason for them ever being created?

Quite conceivably not; it depends on the permissions on the book. There are options - and I admit to not being an expert, since I have ignored devices which tie me to a particular supplier (what happens if the supplier goes bust?) - to share books, but if you move from one device to another then it will likely no longer be available on the original device. Apple readers have, I believe, a system whereby your books are synchronised over all your devices, but it does depend rather on having network access. I think there is a similar system for some of the Android readers - but again, changing between different device types, even if allowed by the controls, may not work if they don't all understand the same coding.

Which is why I stick to ePub format, which can be created with Calibre and edited with Sigil. I believe there is a way whereby you can tell Calibre the passcode for DRM books and it will store it in a non-protected format, but I don't recall the details. Calibre can convert between most ebook formats, too, and between text and pdf-text and rtf and odt and a few other word processor formats - highly recommended.

There are a number of forums which discuss these things in detail.

(At present, Calibre is unable properly to manage the altered database in the kobo touch (V2 introduced 'shelves' which allows, with some effort, the assignation of authors at one to a shelf rather than just a long alphabetical list - vital really if you have more than a couple of dozen books on. I've never understood 'one book at a time, replace it when it's read' philosophy; the damn thing can hold a thousand books and therefore it should!)

One good reason would be not to have to trust in, or pay, a cack-handed page-turner.
One bad reason would be because it's progress

Apart from all the tangible characteristic differences between print and display formats, there has been some speculation regarding the essential differences in visual processing between additive and subtractive light, print being credited as being the more 'relaxed' or 'natural' way to read. I'd rather have a book, that is easier (for me) to process as I wish, than any electronic medium with all the whizz-bangs for 'navigation'.