What books have you read recently?

[Snowman]

E reader? much more sneaky.

Just finished HP 1-7 over break, Got the 3rd and 4th percy jackson book but havn't read them yet, and am now working on the girl with the dragon tattoo.

Just can't bring myself to use an e reader, I don't like them. Text on good old paper is so much better and rewarding for me and easier on the eyes, not to mention a whole lot cheaper than going out and buying an ereader when I have Mein Kampf in pdf.

[diluzio91]

I use one out of necessity... In my dorm there is no room for books, having them all on my nook is nice... i haven't had any problems with the screen on it either, I think its the easiest screen to read on, but ill admit that the experience of a paper book is much more rewarding

[x88x]

I saw a nook on the plane back from Defcon back in August, and I have to say, I was quite impressed by the epaper screen. ..of course now they've ruined that with the color Nook, but whatever. There's just something about a paper book that just gives me warm fuzzies though. Plus, if I lose/etc a paperback, that's me out, absolute max, $10 or so (much less if, like the majority of my books, I bought it second hand). ..if I lose/drop/get stolen/etc an ereader... Speaking of second hand, that's another thing I like about paper books...you can sell them if you want to. And you can buy them secondhand. With most (if not all) of the current ebook DRM schemes, you buy it and it's yours forever (well, until the service dies), and the only place you can buy them is for full price from the 'publisher'. Besides, I like having shelves full of books in my house.

[Snowman]

Besides, I like having shelves full of books in my house.

makes a good place for hidden doors to hidden rooms that lead to the booking agent for the sterile white planes with the single horizontal red line that doesn't fly to area 51... Or just to your bedroom that nobody knew was there.

[Kayin]

I'm currently reading Moby-Dick, and just finished The Count of Monte Cristo unabridged.

Kindle III for the win, huge books are suddenly more portable in my severely damaged hands...

[x88x]

makes a good place for hidden doors to hidden rooms that lead to the booking agent for the sterile white planes with the single horizontal red line that doesn't fly to area 51... Or just to your bedroom that nobody knew was there.

Crap! He's on to us! We have to change the color of the striiiI mean...ummm...what planes? I do not know what you are talking about. <_< -_- >_> -_- <_< -_- >_> *The rabbit is in the cuckoo's nest. Repeat, the rabbit is in the cuckoo's nest.*

[msmrx57]

My wife loves her kindle. I've read on it a little bit and was happily surprised it's not like reading on a screen at all. The only down side is if you read in bed and fall asleep you get wacked in the nose with hard plastic intead of paper.

That being said recently finished "The Heroin Diaries" very interesting read. Now I'm reading "Life On The Mississippi"

[Lothair]

I love both books and E-Ink. I feel so... divided. If only they would include a free PDF with book purchases, then I would do both. It doesn't even have to be free, it just has to be not so insanely expensive. The savings by going digital over hard copy is ridiculously small. Frustrating.

[x88x]

The savings by going digital over hard copy is ridiculously small. Frustrating.

This is one of the biggest problems I have with it. The hardback costs $16, the paperback costs $8, and the ebook costs..$7? Maybe $5? (disclaimer, values pulled out of the air, estimating things I've seen before) Sorry, I know you're saving more than $1-3 by not having to print the thing. Come on. What I would like to see is two things; a good method for selling used ebooks and a library-like service with ebooks. Maybe have some sort of P2P sort of thing, but with DRM that will lock files so that only one person at a time can access each file per license. Then the member can buy licenses and they mark their files if they want them to be available to others and if so, if they want to get priority access (like, say, someone else is reading using the license you bought but you want to read it, so it gives them a notice that they will be logged out of that book in [n] seconds/minutes/etc. Maybe give the option to open up an IM chat with them to negotiate a time that works for both of you. Then, whenever the file isn't being actively accessed, it gets 'checked in' so someone else can access it, with the option of setting a long-term lock on the file if needed.

[Lothair]

Yeah, I just can't imagine where the cost is coming from. Storage should not be an issue, at all. I'm sure they could set it up so that there is basically just one copy of the book that they have stored that you then get sent a copy of, right? It'd be just like a torrent. There's only one file uploaded that many people then download from. So you'd only need to store one file for each book. That's what? 20MB at the most for a high quality copy?

Then you'd have traffic cost, I suppose. But when a book is only 20MB at it's largest and given the fact that books aren't exactly super popular compared to most digital products... There really isn't any cost here. Amazon offers this kind of thing for free and over 3G none-the-less.

The only cost I can see is the publication of the book and whatever percentage goes to the author. Now, if Hardcover books cost around $15 - $20 and Paperback $8 - $15... then a digital copy can't seriously cost $8-$11. That's the same as Paperback! But without any of the associated costs.

Digital copies should not cost more than $5 per title. Perhaps it's just not worth it to even sell them for that amount?