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Originally posted by goofy:
I'm all for some technology that would let us read text on a book-sized screen, where the text is drawn from a hard drive or the net or someplace. As long as I can beam the book to a friend, read it on other devices like my iPod, and mark it with some sort of touch device.

I've got way too many books taking up way too much space. If I could get rid of the paper books and store their contents on a hard drive like I do with my music, that would be awesome.

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Originally posted by BobHale:
[QFine until you drop your kindle and break it and lose not only the book you were reading (and remember that in terms of dropping them books are damn near indestructible) but your entire library.)

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I've got way too many books taking up way too much space. If I could get rid of the paper books and store their contents on a hard drive like I do with my music, that would be awesome.

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
It's awesome for some here, and awful for others. That's life. People are very different. Some of us, young and old, can't give up our books. Others, similarly, are ready to squash the book mites and toss them out, creating more room. That's fine. That tells me that the Kindle could become popular for some, but it will never replace books.

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I would love to know if most librarians agree with CW about the Kindle. I'd think not, but who knows.

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I believe we are moving to a networked future. I just hope this isn’t it.

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Originally posted by Caterwauller:
Bob - I don't think you're all that odd. You're a collector. Collectors will still collect their stuff. That's not a bad thing. It is what it is. I totally understand your desire for the discovery and your enjoyment of books. I see that as a different thing from the books we all pick up, read, and return to the library. Doesn't anyone else do that?

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No man but a blockhead ..... "

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Yet, when Mr. [Steve] Jobs [CEO of Apple] was asked two weeks ago at the Macworld Expo what he thought of the Kindle, he heaped scorn on the book industry. “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is; the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.”

[...]

A survey conducted in August 2007 by Ipsos Public Affairs for The Associated Press found that 27 percent of Americans had not read a book in the previous year. Not as bad as Mr. Jobs’s figure, but dismaying to be sure. Happily, however, the same share — 27 percent — read 15 or more books.

In fact, when we exclude Americans who had not read a single book in that year, the average number of books read was 20, raised by the 8 percent who read 51 books or more. In other words, a sizable minority does not read, but the overall distribution is balanced somewhat by those who read a lot.