h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I love reading and always have from a very small girl. I remember going to the Library on a Saturday with my mum full of excitement and trepidation at having the option to take out 2 new books for the week ahead.

My friend works in IT and is always on-line etc - he tells that he never reads a book because of the pages.

Horror I cry.
Outrage I feel.

Does this technological advance mean an end to books?

I don't think so, e-books are much harder on the eyes in my opinion. Also, there's nothing like the feel of a book, its pages, its smell (especially Penguin classics or that new book aroma) and the ability to cipher in it for literary or memory purposes.

Also, who cannot deny wanting to finish a book more than wanting to read it; looking at the amount of pages on a computer is never as reliable an estimation as looking at the side of the book and comparing the sizes either side of your thumb. Yeah, books are here to stay!!! (Thats three exclamation marks, count 'em, that means its true, almost as certain as something that rhymes)

I don't think paper books will ever really become obsolete though the material the "paper" is made of may change. There are companies working one electronic paper now and in a few years they may combine sheets of it into a book shaped format which will allow you to download a book file into the "book" and read it like a traditional volume. Many classic texts are already available in e-text format. Project Gutenberg for example as of July 1st of 2006 had a collection of 17,500 works (most of them text files)that you could download free as a torrent file and burn to a dvd disk. With all the pda units out in the world it's easy to download a text file to one and carry it with you. Or if you have a laptop computer you can carry the disk along with your laptop and read right off the screen.

Hi CRich70,

I'm new to hootoo but have just come across your comments about down loading books and burning them to a CD, (Project Gutenberg).

Do you know of any sites where I can do this; I am particularly interested in childrens books for my daughter.

Regards

Red-coat

Hi Red-coat,

I don't know too many places where they have just children's books (I assume you mean with illustrations) but I do know at least one site that has some online. http://wiredforbooks.org/kids.htm has an assortment of the old Beatrix Potter books with color illustrations. I don't know if there are any illustrated but the Gutenberg site I use for my books is at: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/ I hope these two sites will be of some help to you.

Hi CRich70,

Many thanks for the kind reply.

I'll give these two sites a look at.



Red

They can't become obsolete, least wise while I am browsing the charity shops.

Spooky how the same book will crop up at the same time in different shops.

I've had it happen where I will find a book I like (which is probably out print) at the public library and later find a copy for sale at a used book store. It's rare but it does happen.And of course there are the books you find at used bookstares that have no copy at your local library.

Hi Red-coat,

You are quite welcome. I hope you find them both of interest. Last time I downloaded the files for the Gutenberg dvd (last July) they had some 17,500 texts in their free to download torrent file. They add new files all the time so they have a lot of good reading material there. They also have mp3 files and some small video files as well. Happy reading.

Books becoming obsolete may well happen but I hope not! If it ever does it won’t be for a long time yet! It's like saying that music cds etc will become obsolete because of MP3, that’s not true and there's even a rebirth of vinyl in recent years showing that not even records are obsolete yet and surely that's what was expected when cds came out. Although Reading online is a much easier way to find information, I think most people that read books use the internet mostly to research other things to read and then go out and get them in book form instead of downloading them to read off the screen! It’s just not the same sitting in the sunshine reading a digital eBook is it! You can’t download a rare, hard to find old book and feel the cover and look at the aged pages can you!!

You make a good point stellarKathrynRose, but on the other hand if a book is too old or rare you often can't get access to the volume in question because of that either. Or if you can it's in a special climate controlled room with a guard posted outside the door. Still others (like Gutenberg's Bible) may only be viewable in a museum display case. That's where digital tech. could come in handy. A book could be (very carefully) scanned into a computer and millions could have access to the digital copy.

I don't think that books will become obsolete so soon. Computers and CDs have a limited capacity and so old texts will be deleted sooner or later and be lost. And then of course almost nobody (except for some nostalgia buffs) will be able to read a CD in, say, 20 years' time because there will be different techniques for storing data.