E-books, Audiobooks and... Books

Bonjour, bonjour, salut!

Today I'm planning to ramble on about the great debate. Which do you prefer? Sure, It's a personal thing.

I, myself, think nothing can beat the feel of a book in your hands. I don't mind lugging them everywhere, because I love them. I love the spine, covers, smell of fresh pages nearly as much as I love the fact that they are tiny treasure coves of imagination. (Yes - I have a problem.) Everything else is lodged into thin, metal gadgets these days, and I love it - iPod, iPad if I was rich, blackberry... But, I draw the line at books.

My mum and stepdad bought me an E-reader for Christmas a few years ago, but I only used it a few times. I ended up spending more money because if I liked a book so much I'd want the hard copy, too. So that was a fiver for the book online and a tenner for the hard copy.

All the arguments are about convinience, and a friend of mine made a good point that yes, in a fire you can grab your E-reader and BAIL! But, if you love books, you'd still own a lot of them and they'd still burn. The E-reader, In my opinion, is only ever a back up.

As for audiobooks, I can understand them more because I have bad eyesight, so reading for long periods of time as I love to do can sometimes be painful. I like to put an audiobook on my iPod and go for a walk or listen to it while I'm travelling somewhere or in bed. The same principle still applies, though. I have listened to most of the books in Martin's 'A Song of Ice and Fire' series on audio but I still need to buy them, because I love them so much.

Now the downside to audio is the price. When I checked a few websites the price of books was around forty pounds, but perhaps that was a one off. Still, I have not seen a book for under twenty. I understand how long the voice actor worked, but, It will not have been anywhere near as long as the writer who's likely worked a year or more on their piece.

I guess I do get a little bit... biassed. I never feel bad about the piracy market surrounding music. I get all VIVA LA REVOLUTION and think of people taking back the music and those overpaid pop stars weeping! But, I know it won't dent them too much, they have gigs and such. I get all tear-eyed when piravy happens to authors. ...Awful, aren't I?

Well, that's all for now. Please give me a buzz, tell me what you think!

Bye for now.