A book (sort of) related query
 

This not really a question about a certain book as such, but I was wondering what you guys thought of ebooks.

I have downloaded several, probably 2 or 300, on all manner of topics from factual to non fiction - including many classic pieces of literature eg. horror stories such as Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll, as well as non horror - Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan to name but a few. I however do have some of these in paper format as well.

If you include the paper ones my collection probably consists of at least 500 books.

The reason I have so many ebooks is simply a matter of space and availability, if I wish to print them off I suppose I could, although it would need half of the Amazonian Rainforest to do so. Also about 99% of them are free, which as an aspiring author helps for research purposes.

The ebooks I have are mainly in pdf, or in MicroSoft Reader format.

I have a couple hundred ebooks as well. They're alright, I suppose, but I don't really consider them to be part of my collection. For me, reading is deeply tied to the actual experience of holding the book. Feeling the pages, smelling the paper, glue and ink... ebooks do away with all of this. Plus, after reading them for so long, my eyes start to hurt. They're not bad though, and they're certainly cheap.

same here .. i wont even consider ebooks ..

I must admit I've never tried an e-book simply because I figure it would hurt my eyes a bit, and it's not really the reading "experience" I'm looking for.

Same here.

I never really read any e-book, but i think it´s not my kind of thing. To read in the monitor? I'm 8 hours a day in front of a PC, dont want to spend the evening in front of it. Even if it is some kind of Palm that you can take to bed.

Have a few hundred e-books in my PC as well, mostly in PDFs. Quite a number a short stories / rarities that i read off the PC when i dont have a paperback in hand. Passes the time.

The rest of the e-books are classic and reference materials which i use for research for my writing. Its so much easier to have the King James ed of the Bible or Shakespeare searchable, rather than looking it up. Really helps to get my quotes and stuff accurate.

you know what would be cool ?

a teeny tiny little electronic book that could project onto any surface you like ..

you could lie in bed and read off the ceiling at night.

i guess this idea would suck in the day.

I think the accessibility of ebooks could be a real asset to our culture. Project Gutenberg, for example, is a noble endeavour. Their translators are awful, but other than that, it's a great asset for important works of literature to be part of the global community and not selling for a price that one could eat for a day on.