Do e-readers remove the SOVL from books? Does the ease of access ruin the mystique of treasure hunting for books and finding obscure titles?
>>24767052>treasure hunting for books and finding obscure titlesWhat if they get republished and become affordable and easy to find? "Nothing personnal, kid"?
I feel like anyone who can't articulate beyond "le sovl le vibes" doesn't actually have a real point
>>24767311That's because they don't.
>>24767052They do not.Pros:>large library on a small device>small device instead of a bulky book>adjustable font sizes for people with retarded eyes>built in dictionaries for people who don't know words (lmao)>backlit e-ink screens give you independence from bullshit environment>most books worth reading will be available for free if you only apply yourself a littleCons:>shit for pictures, graphs, tables of any kind>can't as easily flip around in the book>not as convenient to "annotate" (to scribble in a book like a fucking hun)>reportedly not as arousing to sniff and fondle and lick>the cute waitress will not know you are a smart boy reading Gravity's Rainbow unless you tell herPersonally, I only read fiction for the purpose of recreation, so for me they're perfect. I read way more after getting a Kindle.
Are e-readers good for manga as well?
>>24767502depends on which one but yeah they are. the problems are storage constraints and pixel density. pick a reader with even a decent ppi and good enough storage and it works totally fine
Yeah but I still like reading on an e-reader because it's far more convenient + very useful when reading in foreign languages
>>24767052Do you like the medium or content itself?
>>24767052>the mystique of treasure hunting for books and finding obscure titlesHi /r/books. It's not 1976 anymore. Nobody goes to a bookstore anymore without an idea of what they're getting there, anyone who still buys physical books gets their recommendations from the internet. There's no "finding and hunting" for hidden gems anymore. The entire argument of your post is not just shallow but also retarded
>>24767547The medium is the message, but yeah ereaders are an absolute godsend for poors. My retention is much better with physical books (it's like I can visualize different pages of the physical book when thinking about certain scenes) but you gain some you lose some. I'll obviously always prefer physical, but I'm glad that ereaders are a thing, insanely high return on investment.
>>24767559Do Americans really?
>>24767052Yes.>Benjamin quotes the well-known Latin saying Habent sua fata libelli (books have their fate). For Benjamin, a book has a fate insofar as it is a thing, a possession. It carries material marks that give it a history. An e-book is not a thing, but information; it has an altogether different status of being. Even if we have it at our disposal, it is not a possession. It is something to which we have access. An e-book reduces a book to informational value. The book has no age, place, craft or owner. It lacks the auratic distance from which an individual fate could speak to us. Fate has no place in the digital order. Information has neither a physiognomy nor a fate, and it does not allow for the formation of intense ties. One cannot have, for instance, a personal copy [Handexemplar] of an e-book. A personal copy of a book is given its unmistakeable face, its physiognomy, by the hand of the owner. E-books are faceless and without history. They may be read without the use of the hands. There is a tactile element in the turning of a book’s pages that is constitutive of every relationship. Without bodily touch, no ties can emerge.
>>24767616Who is this Benjamin and why should anyone care about his opinion on the matter?
>>24767052The appeal of e-readers to me is that I can read them in more positions and more comfortably than physical books. I still use physical when consulting charts or general reference work, but if I'm reading something cover to cover it's on an e-reader.
>>24767623Walter Benjamin. The excerpt is from Byung-Chul Han‘s Non-Things.
>>24767635That's really cool. Buy an ad next time though
>>24767052I've been using an e-reader for years and bought a physical copy last week for a book I really liked and when I opened it I was taken aback. I've gotten so used to my settings as in font and font size and I'm probably never going to give that up again.If you don't use e-readers you're the publisher's slave (and you're paying for it too).
>>24767052It's more like they remove your books from the e-reader. They killed the ones with SD cards completely, it's the worst.>>24767502Depends on whether you lucked out and the older Kobos with SD cards didn't die on you yet. You can't put a decent amount of comics on any new ones that aren't straight up Android AI spyware.
>>24767052What SOVL bro the words are still there. The screen doesn't burn your eyes like phones or tablets. You can carry 100s of books with you instead of shoving 3-5 books in your bag. You can pirate all of them for free.
I prefer physical books any time of the day to ereader slop
I just read on my phone, it's comfy in bed and I take it with me everywhere I go.
there's no literature in foreign languages in Russia.If it weren't for my e-reader, I would've lived like the rest of my comrades, either reading in Russian or not at allWith an e-reader I read like a normal western person. It really connects me with all of you, faggots.
>>24767499>reading some long russian tome>see a name, can't remember who they are>search book instantly for all mentions of their namebased ereader, analog books btfo
I just boughted a 32gb paperwhite
>>24768354>The screen doesn't burn your eyes like phones or tabletsIt does if you use the backlight and don't change the color temperature
>>24768391no it doesnt
>>24768395What are you trying to prove with that image? There's a clear difference between the printed page on the left and the electronic page on the right and your eyes notice that too.
>>24768402that's with the backlight on it isn't burning anyone's eyes and it does a great job imitating paper on a digital displayyou're wrong.
>>24768359>slopfag is retardedNo way
>>24768406Are you sure its not frontlight?
>>24768406>backlightSo, you genuinely don't know what you are talking about and you are being a contrarian just because? Got it.
See https://youtu.be/XNWE17GqibI
>>24768460What the fuck are you talking about
>>24767502The most common ereaders have screen sizes of 6-7 inches which is perfect for portability + reading novels but too small to be comfortable for reading manga. My previous Kindle Oasis was too small for it but the Kobo Forma has an 8 inch screen which is big enough. Downside is it is now too big to fit in a pocket. But it's still about as portable as any trade paperback so not super inconvenient. The Forma was discontinued though so I dunno what the best model to buy is nowadays.
>>24768460are you a retard who thinks e-ink screen backlights are the same as LCD or something
>>24768363>there's no literature in foreign languages in Russia.I just order everything from ebay, I'm from kazakhstan and I read complex novels in english
>>24768474This argumentation is even more retarded than what you read on /lit/ occasionally
>>24769432>orderalamo, I live off of $70 a month so no thanks no ebay, but thanks to e-reader (on which I spent $300) have read 50 books in the past 12 months in English.
>>24767559>Nobody goes to a bookstore anymore without an idea of what they're getting thereThis is not true. I regularly go both to Oxfam books and Waterstones just to browse and see what I find. I regularly find and purchase books I've never heard of by authors I know, books on my physical list, books on my vague head list of works I know are important. The only aspect of your argument that rings true in any way is about where people find recommendations; my list is comprised of books I have been recommended or seen discussed online, or from research on historical periods and the books associated with figures.
>>24769775sound nice (the reading plenty of books that is)what types of books or authors do you like to read?
>>24769822>sound nice (the reading plenty of books that is)>what types of books or authors do you like to read?
>>24769906Are e-readers even sold in Russia or are there Russian manufacturers?
>>24770029Of course they are, but I got myself a Chinese Onyx Boox e-reader. The American-made sheaningans with needing to jailbreak, airplane mods etc spooked me.I like Chinese stuff because it allows to do piracy without any restrictions.Best investment I ever made.
>>24770054You paid 300 bucks for a chink e-reader? Does it have all the good stuff (front light, page turn buttons, epub support etc.)?
>>24767499>>24767052It's easier to remember things that you've read in print/physical books. Not so much for electronic devices. If you do read on digital devices, probably read fiction books like adventure or horror books. If you need to remember stuff like reading textbooks or nonfiction literature, physical books are the way to go.https://youtu.be/y2u-4hsSDYo
>>24770112>It's easier to remember things that you've read in print/physical books.There's no evidence for that, at least in the case of e-readers.
>>24770057Onyx Boox Lomonosov.Got it all, and also got a huge screen so you can browse .pdfs with diagrams and whatever.Browsing 4chan or wikipedia on it is quite enjoyable.
>>24770147It is name Lomonosov because when you read in the bed, it fall on you and break your nose. Ha ha!
>>24770147I see, so it's more like a tablet than an e-reader, I myself wouldn't buy such a device, because I really only want to read and don't need the distractions of the internet on it.
>>24767559Pity this man, he has never set foot in a decent used bookstore
>>24768376>can't remember a character because you forget them before the next mentionskill issue, read faster
>>24767052I just turn the red all the way up on my laptop. They seem nice, but I'm not paying for something I essentially already have. If I want a better screen or less bulk I'll use my Steam Deck. If I'm Out, then I probably don't want to be reading away, and if I do, then I don't want my books to have a battery.
No. Ebooks are the natural evolution of literature. People still hung up on the physicality of books and how good they smell buy books as decoration instead of doing any actual deep reading.Through e-books I've not only managed to engage with material I would have never been able to get my hands on, but I've also formed deep connections between texts and taken thousands of notes I can access instantly.Any book I read goes into my notes, where I form links between concepts and ideas I find through my reading. If I wanted to do this with physical books I'd spend more time rummaging through notebooks instead of actually learning anything.
>>24770384not schizo at all
>>24767052How about treasure hunting the books you've read on your e-reader?That way you can have a physical collection of only the best books you read.
>>24770576I do that for books I pirated but actually liked.
>>24770681For what purpose? You already own them on your reader.
>>24770703Decoration mostly.
>>24770112complete nonsense
>>24770724Sometimes, the physical books fall apart. My books on Black Hawk Down and the Illiad came apart for some reason, like the glue holding them together came undone.>>24770844>>24770133I've read articles and seen some videos about physical books versus e-readers or reading on electronic devices. When I have some free time on the weekend, I'll look for those videos and articles. But in short, physical books are best for studying and remembering stuff.
>>24767052>Does the ease of access ruin the mystique of treasure hunting for books and finding obscure titles?Nah, I find more interesting and obscure titles while browsing Project Gutenberg than in the used book stores of my small city.
>>24770112>my youtuber said something so it MUST be true
>>24771097If you actually inspect the sources of those articles you will find that none of them compared e-readers to physical books, it’s always other digital reading devices. This is the only study that actually compared ereaders, but it didn’t measure long term memory: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6384527/
>>24770384You know you can read physical books and take digital notes, right?
>>24767499>another soulless bugman reducing everything to a utilitarian calculusI'm so tired of you "people"
>>24767052>>24767052>Do e-readers remove the SOVL from books?No>>24771113Most used bookstores suck dick. The good ones are spectacular though.
>>24771097i will examine your sources if you find them, but i've only heard what this fella is saying >>24771113
>>24767052First they tried saddling me with codices, now they want me to read on some pansy screen?What about real books?It took me ages to get over clay tablets and now they want me to change again?
>>24771113Project Gutenberg have terrible quality
nothing beats physical paperbacks
Is there a way to see when you started reading a book on a kindle, if you have it in flight mode and not use the goodreads/online integration?
>>24767499I find them better for annotating actually because you can search your annotations
>>24767052No. Books are meant to be read.The ritual stuff are stupid nerdy quirks that turn it into collecting vinyls.
>>24767547Both? I'll always read a hard copy if it's easily available. if not, I'll settle for an ebook.
>>24772452What kind of ereader do you have? I have a relatively new paperwhite kindle, and it's a pain in the ass to highlight and annotate.
>>24770054But now the CCP knows what you're reading.
>>24772542CCP is hosting Anna's Archive anyways, so whatever
>>24767052>find a good book on the interwebz>buy the physical copy once you’re done e-reading it Simple as.
>>24768395kitty
>>24770112disgusting
>>24772553>>24770703
Only for "referential" books like House of Leaves
>>24772542I will now download Mao's writings on my Chinese e-reader for them to contact and hire me.
>>24772706你永遠不會成為中國人
>>24772676That's a nice word for what House of Leaves is.
>>24767052I used to think they did but it's clearly the opposite now.Cringe: Buying physical books from cucked bookstores and legacy publishers that toe the regime line so you can take selfies and use them as background fodder on Zoom calls and BookTok.Based SOVL: Pirating everything from libgen and storing all books on a device that can be carried everywhere and lets you read The Bell Curve, The Camp of the Saints, or The Art of the Deal anywhere you want, free from freaks who may accost you or take pictures of you for doing so.
>>24772781don’t you come up against formatting errors when you pirate books? i’s becoming t’s. chapters starting halfway down a page. or does that sort of thing not bother you?
>>24772789you can pirate actual retail ebooks. you don't have to read someone's bootleg scan.
>>24772806the books i read aren’t that well-known.
Anyone else super autistic about their ebook collection?I'm having a hard time finding properly tagged and series-consistent books aroundAny good sources to keep the tism at bay?
>>24773240Private trackers are your best bet but it's still hit or miss
>>24767052People fetishize physical books.If you can find a way to interface with the knowledge, and retain it, it's valid.Even audiobooks.>>24772813there's ebook archives that ought to have whatever you're looking for no matter how obscure
>>24767052A few concerns about the state of physical books: 1. Format inflation: Publishers increasingly release only large trade paperbacks, expensive, cumbersome, and impractical for anyone who once valued portability. 2. Aesthetic decline: Distinctive cover art has been displaced by minimalist typography and flat color palettes, trading visual storytelling for brand uniformity. 3. Narrow curation: Many bookshops now optimize for a narrow cultural demographics, YA LGBTQ+ and Bipoc zoomer slop rather than intellectual breadth, privileging identity marketing over literary merit. 4. Price distortion: With costs rising and quality falling, the incentive to read digitally or to reclaim the public domain through open access only grows stronger.
>>24772411You can highlight a passage at the beginning of the book and then see when you highlighted it.
>>24768483>>24769413it's actually a front light
>>24773576they have them, just not perfectly formatted and with no attached book cover when i put in on my kindle.
>>24772781>Cringe: Buying physical books from cucked bookstores and legacy publishers that toe the regime line so you can take selfies and use them as background fodder on Zoom calls and BookTokHave any of you faggots heard of libraries?>based sovl: hide what youre reading because its so based much sovlNiggers can't read they'll stab you for fun they wouldn't know what you're reading even if you shoved the book in their face.
>>24774064Calibre should solve the cover issue with ease, and even the formatting if you do it yourself
>>24771280go retvrn to tradition faget
>>24774233yeah, or i guess i could just pay the 3.99
>>24774233>Calibre should solve the cover issue with easethe kindle software actually deletes the covers when books are sideloaded (but only after you unplug the usb). no idea why other than to fuck with end users.calibre can fix the covers and undo amazon's retardation but only if you unplug it to trigger the behavior and then re-plug it back in
>>24774413>calibre can fix the covers and undo amazon's retardation but only if you unplug it to trigger the behavior and then re-plug it back inChrist I'm so happy I bought a Kobo
>>24774442Which one?
>>24773240Get the RETAIL labeled books from Bibliotik. Also you can edit the tags in Calibre.
>>24773680>Price distortionBe happy that you don’t live in a hellhole like Germany where you have fixed book prices. That makes books rather expensive.
>>24774413This has literally never happened to me and I edited the covers of countless calibre books and put them on my kindle.
>>24774448Bought the Clara BW after my nook glow light died after a decade. Very happy with the purchase. Some people complain about screen size but I'm used to the format from the nook so it doesn't bother me
>>24767499>>24767499Agreed, I still read the odd physical book here and there (especially if it's non-fiction with a lot of maps and charts) but I vastly prefer reading on my Kindle (though now I'm about to switch to Kobo with all the retarded DRM shit Amazon is pulling - warning to everyone, keep your Kindle in airplane mode). I read way more and I also find I read much more quickly as well. This is the first year in my life that I've hit 50 books read and it's not even the end of the year yet.
>>24767311They might have a point even though they can’t articulate it>>24767499One can add soul to a book by writing good margin notes and having a dialed-in system for underlining and circling and drawing icons in the margins to categorize your thoughts.I have a choice of highlighter colors plus underlining in the Apple Books app, but I don’t really trust something like that to durably store annotations that will last decades. I’d want something like that Chrome text-highlight URL scheme paired with Markdown in a text file stored with the e-book and backed up elsewhere (not just in iCloud).
>>24774442The mental retardation of Kobo readers really is a sight to behold. Kindles will always be the best, for the simple reason that they'll always be the cheapest.
>>24774705>They might have a point even though they can’t articulate itYeah, and non-verbal retards might know the cure for cancer, how will we ever know?Can you define what you mean by "soul"?
>>24774714>>24767616
>>24774456Maybe if you've had your kindle in airplane mode for 5+ years and never got the over the air update that started it
>>24774707NTA but I got my kobo for cheaper than my kindle oasis, which is the only good kindle on account of being the only one with pageturn buttons instead of being touchscreen only. it's discontinued now
>>24775069That's because you probably bought it new like a retard. I've got 3 Oasis models, and I paid 50-70 bucks for them.
>>24775078>I've got 3 Oasis models, and I paid 50-70 bucks for them.So you paid $200 for it.
>>24775206Well, the 3rd gen was a mistake I bought first. If I had bought a piece of junk like the Libra, I would've spent a lot more. If I resold the 3rd gen it'd be about 100 bucks for my Oasis and my spare.
ereaders are nigger-tier
>>24775067I can’t comment on that, recently my whole kindle library was deleted when I tried to jailbreak it and thus turned off airplane mode, I reset my device after that, got the latest updates and enabled airplane mode again. Since then no covers were deleted in my case.
I can read more books comfortably on an Ereader than I can in print. I love my Kobo Libra 2. Idk why they force the shitty color version. >Backlight so I can read at any angle>Light and easy to hold with one hand>Doesn't strain the eyes >Don't wind up with a bunch of books on a shelf I'll never read again I fucking love my Kobo honestly
>>24775262Why didnt you get a kindle
>>24775262>Idk why they force the shitty color version.Because "progress"! Color is the hot new gimmick, look, the book covers you'll never read are now in shitty color! Great for taking photos!Huh? The screens are worse and fuck up the B/W layer? Who cares, you've got to consume new product! I'm just glad there were occasionally people around who actually considered things like the user experience and aimed to make high quality products, even if they've since been replaced. Happens with everything, at least e-readers don't need updates like phones do, so you can keep using the good models forever and ignore the lower quality "replacements".
>>24767052>Do e-readers remove the SOVL from books?obviously yes>Does the ease of access ruin the mystique of treasure hunting for books and finding obscure titles?yes and not only that. It makes you engage with the books you have with less depth because your brain always knows that you can change the book at a moments notice if it doesn't please you
>>24775286>at least e-readers don't need updates like phones do, so you can keep using the good models foreverJust you wait
>>24775293What can they really do? Introduce a new gimmick formatting standard nobody will use to force upgrades? There will be a converter within 5 minutes.I'm not paying for an e-reader to do AI summaries of books I'm reading, dude. My current e-reader is about as optimal as they can get.
>>24775262>backlight>doesnt strain the eyesI believe your device uses a frontlight then
>>24775301>My current e-readerWhich?
>>24775307Oasis 1, lowest weight e-reader (130g) with a 6" screen.
>>24774707>The mental retardation of Kobo readers really is a sight to behold. I have no idea how you reach this conclusion when Im not the one complaining about my device being finicky every e-reader thread
>>24775347I'm just making fun of you for taking his word as gospel over some minor bug I've only ever heard about. I've never had a problem with my Kindle.
>>24770384lmao
>>24767052I'm not a pathetic poser who fills his bookshelves solely to impress people, I read because I like it.
>>24771113>>24772146For me, it's ePub/Mobi downloads from Wikisource.There's nothing quite like reading a Wikipedia article about an author, scrolling down to the bottom of the page, and seeing that the author's works are available from Wikisource.
>>24767502Paperwhite is pretty cool, read the entirety of Tokyo Ghoul and Re thereSome minor pages where I had to zoom in due to text being a bit small but that's mostly because the dialogue is too much sometimesReading Vagabond and it's fucking KINOCan't imagine reading manga in anything smaller than a Paperwhite
>>24767052Most people that LARP about loving paper books don't even read them, they just like treasure hunting as you described. Why wade through shelves of dragon smut and james patterson novels to find a dusty copy of something you could find online in 30 seconds?
>>24775301>What can they really do?Realistically the best they could do to "force" you to upgrade models would be to cut off the oldest ones from their servers meaning no ebook store and i guess maybe no libby integration. Would work kinda well against normalfags but piracy/sideloading exists. And a lot of those normalfags probably consoomed the new product already.
>>24776242This would be like a printer company stopping production of ink cartridges. Amazon makes their money on books, not the e-readers.They've already stopped support for 10+ year old devices in terms of direct store access on the device, but you can still buy books from them and just transfer them via USB. I don't see this as an issue because it's far easier to browse for books on PC anyway, I doubt it made that many people upgrade.
Does switching fonts screw up the formatting?
>>24770378>I’ll read on my steam deckHoly shit this board is full of fucking mongrels
>>24776696no, ebooks are just html files. it works the same as setting a font in css on a website. the text reflows based on its new size
>>24773240Calibre and just tagging myself before moving them to my ereader.
>>24775285Because Amazon can suck me? >>24775305But the light is behind the text
>>24778550But it’s not at the back of the screen, so no backlight
>>24779419Youre right. I had no idea. Thank you anon I learned something
>>24780818I have only known the difference between front and backlight for a few days myself, but makes sense that one would be better for the eyes.
>>24767052I don't know, but I do know it's harder for me to focus on digital books in general because it's just too easy to tab away to something else and resisting that temptation takes mental effort.
>>24770112textbooks are heavy, and though I LOVE physical books, the shape, the texture, the smell, I really think my ipad is far better for reading textbooks than the physical books-carry as many as I want in a small devices, possibility for annotations with the pencil, look for things I don't understand immediatelykindle not so much unless the book is text only
>>24767052If your goal is arbitrary pretension, then yes, they remove the “SOVL”
>>24767559I've seen almost the entirety of the /lit/ top 100 at thrift stores, estate sales, and church book sales over the last 10 years. And besides those, some actually good books as well
>>24781188That's why you use an ereader that doesn't handle anything else and not something like a boox with android on it. Exiting to the home menu isn't that different from keeping your fingers between the book and looking at the cover for a few seconds, something I do with physical books as well.At least, that's how I rationalise it.