BF2S Forums BF3s Book Club

@Uzique

Just got it in the mail right now. Way too many books to read this semester so I will have to wait for December to read it.


I don't know why my phone is taking pictures sideways

Shouldn't you be spending time with your wife?

Macbeth wrote:

@Uzique

Just got it in the mail right now. Way too many books to read this semester so I will have to wait for December to read it.


I don't know why my phone is taking pictures sideways

I get mine in two days. Will enjoy reading it after submitting my MA thesis on DFW.

Lol you Americans get a fucking retarded Oprah-style cover.

Holy shit that is one of the worst book covers for a 'literary' biography that I have ever seen.

Jay is just snarky because DFW is far too difficult for his Ayn Rand-addled little mind.

Last edited by aynrandroolz (2012-09-05 15:59:20)

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Wasn't there an argument somewhere in this thread about the relevancy or irrelevancy of book covers?

not sure, but either way I think it's absolutely vital nowadays if publishers want to compete with e-readers..

Jenspm wrote:

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Wasn't there an argument somewhere in this thread about the relevancy or irrelevancy of book covers?

not sure, but either way I think it's absolutely vital nowadays if publishers want to compete with e-readers..

Yeah, like the music industry wants to compete with the pirate bay.

It aint gonna happen.

AussieReaper wrote:

Jenspm wrote:

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Wasn't there an argument somewhere in this thread about the relevancy or irrelevancy of book covers?

not sure, but either way I think it's absolutely vital nowadays if publishers want to compete with e-readers..

Yeah, like the music industry wants to compete with the pirate bay.

It aint gonna happen.

No, not like music at all.

Physical music in the case of CDs (ignoring vinyls because it's quite small) is losing out to digital because most people don't have a physical relationship to music, nor do they always commit to it 100%. Ie, they fill up their iPod with thousands of songs, press shuffle and listen all day. Some people even listen to it while having conversations. Background music.

The CD in itself has little-to-no value - the value is in the (digital) music. How many people (of my generation) use CD-players anymore?

With books it's not the same. There is a reason people are willing to pay more for hard-back copies. There's a reason why faber can charge £10 for their 40 pages of poetry - the books are of extremely high quality. Where's the quality in a digital copy of music in a cheap plastic cover?

Books have a massive impact on our reading experience - the paper, the font, the size, the cover design all have an effect on our reading/viewing pleasure.

And while people might not have any added satisfaction in popping the latest Lady Gaga into a CD-player as opposed to downloading it from the internet and playing it out of their laptop speakers, I think a lot of people enjoy reading books, holding books, looking at books. We don't just display books to back up some image we have of ourselves, but also because books are pretty. Why else would Libraries be massive tourist attractions and themes for artwork (check Candida Höfer, shit's amazing)?

Books are lovely, romantic. Would I go look at national library x if it was all digitized and there was just rows upon rows of CDs? Nah.

What if I wanted to lend or give a book away? Text books aren't the only books that require paging back and fourth. The notes for Infinite Jest don't carry over well to ebooks. I have a digital copy of it. It blows. What if I don't have a charger or power outlet for the reader? What if someone steals it? What happens to my collection? If I accidently break it? Do I lose everything?



Don't be stupid

What happens if Amazon stops their ereader service? Keeping the thing charged is also a pain.


Also like I said, some books don't translate over to digital form well.

Jay wrote:

The only reason to buy a physical copy of a book is if you want to display it. Outside of textbooks, which require flipping back and forth, a digital copy works just fine for getting the material from the 'page' into your brain, which is the purpose of a book.

You view a book as a piece of art, and that's fine, but it has no advantages over an e-book in fulfilling its primary purpose.

A well printed book (good ink/font on good paper in a good format) is more enjoyable to read, in my opinion, than an e-book with e-ink and a standardised format. And enjoyment is the primary purpose of (many) books.

Jenspm wrote:

Jay wrote:

The only reason to buy a physical copy of a book is if you want to display it. Outside of textbooks, which require flipping back and forth, a digital copy works just fine for getting the material from the 'page' into your brain, which is the purpose of a book.

You view a book as a piece of art, and that's fine, but it has no advantages over an e-book in fulfilling its primary purpose.

A well printed book (good ink/font on good paper in a good format) is more enjoyable to read, in my opinion, than an e-book with e-ink and a standardised format. And enjoyment is the primary purpose of (many) books.

Fonts transfer to ereaders.

You're making a romantic argument, and thats fine, all im saying is that if your purpose is to gain knowledge, ebooks are just fine.

I stopped using my kindle a while ago for Non fiction for the simple reason i like to have an idea how many pages i have left. for fiction, its fine imo

The pleasure is in the words, not the format for me

Jay wrote:

Jenspm wrote:

AussieReaper wrote:

Yeah, like the music industry wants to compete with the pirate bay.

It aint gonna happen.

No, not like music at all.

Physical music in the case of CDs (ignoring vinyls because it's quite small) is losing out to digital because most people don't have a physical relationship to music, nor do they always commit to it 100%. Ie, they fill up their iPod with thousands of songs, press shuffle and listen all day. Some people even listen to it while having conversations. Background music.

The CD in itself has little-to-no value - the value is in the (digital) music. How many people (of my generation) use CD-players anymore?

With books it's not the same. There is a reason people are willing to pay more for hard-back copies. There's a reason why faber can charge £10 for their 40 pages of poetry - the books are of extremely high quality. Where's the quality in a digital copy of music in a cheap plastic cover?

Books have a massive impact on our reading experience - the paper, the font, the size, the cover design all have an effect on our reading/viewing pleasure.

And while people might not have any added satisfaction in popping the latest Lady Gaga into a CD-player as opposed to downloading it from the internet and playing it out of their laptop speakers, I think a lot of people enjoy reading books, holding books, looking at books. We don't just display books to back up some image we have of ourselves, but also because books are pretty. Why else would Libraries be massive tourist attractions and themes for artwork (check Candida Höfer, shit's amazing)?

Books are lovely, romantic. Would I go look at national library x if it was all digitized and there was just rows upon rows of CDs? Nah.

The only reason to buy a physical copy of a book is if you want to display it. Outside of textbooks, which require flipping back and forth, a digital copy works just fine for getting the material from the 'page' into your brain, which is the purpose of a book.

You view a book as a piece of art, and that's fine, but it has no advantages over an e-book in fulfilling its primary purpose.

100% nonsense. The only sort of book that you need to refer to and flick around is a textbook? E-readers are nightmarish for anything more than casual, one-time reading. If I want to get out a book to find a quote, or re-read a passage that takes my fancy... a book is great: I have earmarked pages, made marginal notes, placed page-markers, etc. An e-reader sucks. Also for references: I know my page, chapter, and overall position in the book far better than just having it say "35%". Oh, you know, that passage... at 35% in the book? No. If you are reading 'The Wasteland' or Infinite Jest - heavily footnoted, appendixed and hyper-textual pieces of work - would you prefer to have the physical item to flick between or scroll endlessly through digital menus? I'm guessing you don't read many serious scholarly works or pieces of high-fiction though, so this argument will likely be lost on you. When you're reading Hegel's heavily-footnoted and annotated German idealism, though, I know I'd rather have a trusty book than have to keep page-flipping to the end of chapter for his explanations.

I agree that E-readers occupy the 'greatest ease' and convenience market quite well. But books will not die out-- and their continuing fans will not be the pseud's that thing they are 'omg objet's d'art' or anything like that. A book is just a tangible object that has a much better practical purpose. It is something reified and actually of this world. I like having a bookshelf (evidently you do too; you spent a lot of time bragging about how many bookshelves you needed for your new flat, apparently making you guilty too of this proclivity for outward display). E-readers will continue to grow, and the book market will likely shrink in the 'popular' section, where people don't care much about the format and just want to consume the latest Twilight or 50 Shades of, or whatever. However, I think the book as a form of technology is FAR from obsolete. It will enjoy a lasting relationship and consumer-base just as the vinyl record has (which is growing now, by the way, overtaking CD's and at a stage of popularity pretty much unseen since the early 90's).

People fall in love with novelty, 'innovation', new gadgets. We like new toys and we like to convince ourselves that every new device that fulfills an everyday purpose is automatically making 'progress'. However, examples in the past would lead one to believe that this is not always set-in-stone and certain. E-Readers are a great little gadget for certain situations, e.g. going on holiday and you don't want to take all 7 volumes of A la recherche du temps perdu with you. Time and time again though, the experiential part of sitting in a cosy chair with a book and devoting your time to the mental activity of reading triumphs qualitatively over staring at a screen (no matter how much paper-verisimilitude it aims for) and pressing buttons. There's something about the pace and activity of reading that slows the gears down and brings life back to the pace and ease of a previous time: pre-digital, pre-super-speed-everything, pre-download-it-now, pre-constant-refreshes. The pace of the internet and modern technology is frenetic, and this is why people are re-connecting with previous formats (such as the vinyl record), which are more contemplative and require more of your attention, rather than a 15-tab browser window or a phone with 75 functions. It's nice-- but not in a way that is an affectation of 'retromania' or 'vintage hipsterism' or whatever you're tempted to pigeonhole it as. It's just sincerely, actually nicer. Only the most dogmatic of technophiles will dismiss people's appreciation of old technology; newer and easier is decidedly NOT always better.

And yes, the pleasure is in the words... of course. I'm not going to concern myself much over whether I get my Lermontov on a parchment scroll or downloaded straight into a retinal screen. But having a physical artifact of your reading enhances the experience of forming a relationship to that particular work of art (and its Benjaminian aura). It is an object with a place in time+space and an emotional place in your life. The words are the main attraction but it's nice to look at a shelf and see the object that contains them, that carries all the traces of your individual history with that particular tale. I cherish childhood books, despite them being creased and dogeared and water-damaged and dirty. I can't say I cherish my first-generation iPod video that sits in a dark-drawer somewhere, with 160Gb of digital files entombed on it, decaying slowly. I can't say I'll cherish a Kindle in 15 years time, which will probably sit in a drawer somewhere, too. The entire works of Dickens for £7? Oh, fantastic. But I'd still rather pay £70 and have an actual item for my trade and transaction. I'd rather pass on my thousands of books to my children than hand them a device (which will be laughably out-dated, as is the way of technology and gadgets) and saying "look at this old outdated screen and this terribly slow device: on it is all my favourite books...". etc.

Last edited by aynrandroolz (2012-09-06 09:32:08)

But book piles look way better than potted plants.

Jay wrote:

Jenspm wrote:

Jay wrote:

The only reason to buy a physical copy of a book is if you want to display it. Outside of textbooks, which require flipping back and forth, a digital copy works just fine for getting the material from the 'page' into your brain, which is the purpose of a book.

You view a book as a piece of art, and that's fine, but it has no advantages over an e-book in fulfilling its primary purpose.

A well printed book (good ink/font on good paper in a good format) is more enjoyable to read, in my opinion, than an e-book with e-ink and a standardised format. And enjoyment is the primary purpose of (many) books.

Fonts transfer to ereaders.

You're making a romantic argument, and thats fine, all im saying is that if your purpose is to gain knowledge, ebooks are just fine.

I stopped using my kindle a while ago for Non fiction for the simple reason i like to have an idea how many pages i have left. for fiction, its fine imo

Preferring a book over a slab-shaped turd with buttons isn't entirely a romantic argument.