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The “Old Fashioned” Way of Reading

One of our longtime friends is a book review blogger and is a passionate opponent of e-books. She recently posted this adaptation of Winston Churchill’s famous quote in support of her position.

“We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight on Facebook, we shall fight on Twitter and the blogs, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength, we shall defend our old-fashioned way of reading, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight in the libraries, we shall fight in the bookstores and in the streets if we must; we shall never surrender our books.”

I’m a huge fan of my Kindle, for a variety of reasons. I love having my entire library come with me across countries, across continents, in my pocket, and in long lines. I read far more because of it.

At the same time, I still buy certain kinds of books in their paper form, particularly presidential biographies, which I love to collect.

What do you think? Do the benefits of e-books outweigh the drawbacks? Or do you love e-books so much that you can’t imagine buying dead trees any more?

  • http://www.alearningaday.com Rohan

    It’s a mix for me. 

    80% of my reading is audio books… but then, every once in a while, there comes a book where it helps having a paperback version. 

    I’m happy about the trees part though. I was thinking about it today as I was preparing for a meeting. And my prep involved getting a whole bunch of reading material in word and saved on dropbox for me to access once I was out of home.

    Printing a 100 pages may not have been the best use of paper.. 

    • http://www.aaronklein.com/ Aaron Klein

      Audio books…another angle I hadn’t thought of.

      I am definitely not an auditory learner. I struggle to retain what I get from audio books. So I tend to stick to the visual approach to reading.
      And yes, reading material for meetings is one of the best uses of a tablet that I’ve seen. When I’ve used one, I’d have Dropbox or something like that sync those documents to the iPad and then pull it out on a train or plane for easy reading.

  • http://julwilson83.wordpress.com/ Julia Wilson

    I don’t have a kindle/tablet, but I fully understand how practical the takeover of e-books is. It saves trees and you can access new books from anywhere at anytime. It’s awesome and I know e-books are going to be around for a long time. 

    My only fear is that eventually regular books will become outdated. And although e-books are awesome, sometimes you just need/want an actual book. I love going to Barnes and Noble on a day off and sitting there skimming through the hundreds of books, browsing through the ones with the most interesting cover. Actual books are awesome. 

    People said the same thing about CD’s and Albums, but I think books are on a different personal level. We took them for granted and I think I’m going to be very sad when they start becoming harder to find. 

    • http://www.aaronklein.com/ Aaron Klein

      I think that’s true.

      As much as I love my Kindle, I really love collecting the books that are on my shelves.
      Something tells me physical books will live on – but largely priced as collector’s items.


Aaron Klein is CEO at Riskalyze, a Sierra College Trustee, and an adoption and orphan advocate. Most important: a husband and dad striving to live Isaiah 1:17. More »

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