The pros and cons of Ebooks.

Well here we are again. I want to talk today about the virtues and issues of Ebooks like the Nook and the Kindle. First let me consider the pros. (1) You can carry LOTS of books all in one place. If you are going on vacation or an avid reader this is AWESOME! If you are not such an avid reader… well that’s not so important. On the other hand you can also subscribe to blogs, magazines and newspapers with your device. Which leads me to the next plus… (2) You can easily get another book. You do not have to go to the library or the bookstore, you can just go online, find a book and have it delivered to your device, without even getting out of your bathrobe. (Some people find this to be a con though since their trips to the library or bookstore is the only outing time they get.) (3) There are things that you can add or include in your “Ebook” which enhance the experience. You can have the device “read the book” to you, play music while you read or you can install games to play for the times you need a distraction but do not feel up to reading. However there are cons to the whole genre too. (1) For example, like all electronic stuff an Ebook is open to bugs. They can freeze up or run out of battery power or short out or be easily damaged if they are banged around to hard. A real book will “survive” certain things like that much more easily. (2) Again due to their being electronic devices they can be temperamental. They require specific temperature ranges and even certain weather issues can negatively influence them, worse than a regular book would be affected. (3) This is a biggie I think, COST. You buy a regular book and that is all the expense. You buy an Ebook and you still have to go out and buy the “books” to store and read on the device. Personally I think that it would be best if the sellers of the Ebooks would add a “free” amount of downloads. (If you buy this device we will throw in 10 books of your choice free of charge.) That way it feels like you are getting your money’s worth. Oddly enough there is actually another con, one that I think was unintentional and, perhaps, unforeseeable And that is the “encouragement the Ebook would give to people to write books who have absolutely NO business doing so. I have purchased a Kindle from Amazon; actually I bought it at Target. And partly due to the cost issue already mentioned, I have found that the books I am inclined to load (free or at least really cheap) are, … well poorly written. There is no system where the books are vetted for issues like spelling or anything. So when I am reading along and all of a sudden come across a word that makes no sense… well I get really upset sometimes. I suppose it is almost as bad as people like me who use to many of those triple dot things. No really, it is kind of like when I was a boy of about 12; I was reading a book I got from the school library. I remember there was a word in that book I didn’t know; Pubic, but since I never heard of that word I simply substituted another word I DID know public which seemed to me to fit only it didn’t, what the heck is a PUBLIC hair??? But fortunately because the word was spelled correctly I was able to say “wait PUBLIC hair doesn’t make sense… there is no L in this word, let me look up PUBIC and see what it means. Then after all that I was able to say AH HAH!!! And I learned something new. The problem here is that the person making the mistake, adding letters or leaving them out, are the WRITERS so how then would a boy like me have figured that out? See I think part of the problem is that these “writers” are counting on spell check to catch their mistakes. The thing is that spell check does not care about context. For example think of the nursery rhyme, Mary had a little lamb, It’s fleece was white as snow, And everywhere that Mary went The lamb was sure to go. That is how it goes! Yet I could type instead… Merry hat a lid dell lam Its fleas was wide as no And every ware that Merry wend The lam was sure two go. Ok so I wrote all that WITH spell check on. Both passed muster, but the two “poems” are totally different. In fact the second one makes absolutely NO sense whatsoever. It is just a bunch of words strung together. They may sound the same as the first one they may be understood the same IF READ OUT LOUD but to read them you could get lost pretty quick. That is a large part of the problem with the authors I have been seeing lately. Worse maybe, some of the classic books I have received in my Kindle show similar degradation of spelling. Also some of the books I have read, the author/s have apparently HEARD a phrase or quote but never SEEN the quote. So they keep substituting what they THOUGHT they heard for the idiom wanted. So I guess what they need to do is get an idea of what life is really like and get a dictionary. Example “Nip it in the Bud!” I am pretty sure that the phrase I just wrote is the correct way to do it. Having gone out and seen the buds of leaves or flowers in the spring. And having put the quote in context (stop it before it really gets started). Then I can put together in my mind the idea that if you want to keep a flower from blooming or a tree from putting out a leaf then you NIP the branch/flower while it is IN THE BUD. Thus you will achieve the goal of stopping the process before it gets started. However what does NIP IT IN THE BUT do? Do you mean nip it in the butt? And what exactly does gently biting (a.k.a. nipping) someone on his or her hindquarters do to stop a process before it gets started? It doesn’t make sense. And of course Homophones are a big trap for these writers. I am going two the market where I will get too apples… oh and a pear to. HUH?????? It seems they forget that some words SOUND the same while being spelled (Spelt?) differently and that difference totally makes a difference! In a horror story am I going to be afraid of the wicked which? No but if it was a witch… oh yeah! Is it nice to have sunny whether? Um I do not think so but if the WEATHER is sunny I would like that a lot. And what is rack and ruin? When someone destroys a department store? Although WRACK and ruin… yeah that makes sense. How about, Reek or wreak? Peek or peak? Time or thyme? Accept or except? Leek or leak? Knight or night? Bite or byte? Red or read? Plain or plane? And then there are the times when spelling just doesn’t seem to matter. It is ok to put it in as long as it is a close approximation and the word doesn’t kick up a spell check error. (Lick instead of Like? Really?) Anyway those are the issues I have found with “Ebooks” and those are the reasons why I think it would be a good idea to keep a hold of your paper backs (or even Hardbacks) for a while yet to come.