How do you read these days?

This past Friday a colleague lent me a book to read. And when I say book, I mean an actual book. Hardcover. 252 pages. The title looked interesting and the content was relevant to me, so Saturday morning I picked it up and started reading in bed whlie Miss CrackBerry slept in.

There was nothing odd about this scenario, or at least I didn't think there was, until at 23 pages into the book it dawned on me... apparently I now hate reading physical books. Though I had attained this book for free, I put it down, grabbed my PlayBook, fired up the Kobo app, bought the book for $20.69 (could have bought it on the Kindle for $9.88 so Amazon had better get that Kindle app for the PlayBook out asap!), downloaded it, then continued to read happily for the next two hours.

For the past few years I've mainly done my reading on E-Book devices. I was a relatively early adopter of the Kindle, own an iPad and iPad 2 which when I do use them it's mainly for reading, and since getting the PlayBook have done a lot of reading on that. And when I don't have any of these bigger-screened devices around I'll read on my phone. But as much as I've been an adopter of E-Book readers, it wasn't until this weekend that I really reflected on why I prefer reading on a digital device.

I'm sure there are many more reasons than this, but here are mine:

  • I can read in silence (no sound of pages flipping)
  • I can read whatever books I want and the people around me don't know what I'm reading (I have pretty eclectic and occassionally weird taste in books so don't need people I don't know seeing what I'm reading)
  • I can have my entire library with me wherever I go (I tend to like to re-read a lot of my favorite passages)
  • I don't need to go to a bookstore to buy books (just need an internet connection)
  • I like that I can change up the font size (make it big so I can read on a treadmill)
  • I can look up the definitions of words I don't know on the fly

Put it all together and I find it almost a painful experience to read through a real book... unless of course, you know, my battery is dead or I'm trying to read outside. But most things being equal, I'm definitely a digital guy.

Which brings us to the question of this week's CrackBerry Poll.... are you an E-Book addict like me, or still loyal to paper?? Vote on the poll above and sound off in the comments!

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