As an apologist for the physical book, it pains me to write this. I love books. I love the unwieldy weight, the slowly yellowing pages, the smell (ugh, sorry for the cliché), and the fact that I can look at a stack and remember where and when I read each one. But I have found a new love. now booking by phone is my best friend.
Since my son was born, my life has taken an unexpected turn towards the practical. and from a purely pragmatic point of view, ingesting letters from a heavy cuboid that requires multiple hands to read further is not.
You are reading: Books to read on my phone
a phone, on the other hand, is.
first of all, he is always with me. I can hold onto it during the hours of repetitive motion needed to put my baby to sleep. I can grab it in the few moments I sit on the toilet. I can read in the dark, during the rare moments when everyone but me is asleep and the house is quiet.
Based on screen time, I spent an average of three and a half hours on my phone in the last seven days. Realistically, not all of that time will be spent reading, but even if you were to use three of those hours reading at very average speed, you could finish the Iliad in three days. If I lost my mind, I could read the entire Harry Potter series in just over three weeks. or the entire game of thrones saga in 39 days (yes, I know it’s called a song of ice and fire, shut up nerd).
Then there are the obvious advantages: the phones have adjustable backlighting, a built-in library, readability and accessibility settings, (sometimes) automatic dark mode, search, and best of all, one-handed page turning. , do I need to continue? Well, most modern phones are also waterproof (to some extent), so reading in the bathroom no longer requires fiddly maneuvering with bath towels placed strategically nearby.
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Finally, there is a less tangible advantage. when you read something exciting, one of those stories you want to spend every free minute reading, the lure of social media and other time wasters on your phone just disappear.
It’s not even a conscious effort. the success of apps made to gobble up your attention totally depends on there being nothing better to do. and with a good book on your phone, there is! With one big caveat from experience: choosing a bad or boring book can actually lead to more use of social media to put off reading the boring one, and since you already have your phone in hand, it’s easier to just give up. expired and go to instagram.
Of course, there are also some drawbacks. the screen of a phone is usually smaller than the page of a book. On the one hand, this means that not much text fits on one screen and you will turn pages more often. on the other hand, look how you rip those pages! You should be proud of yourself, you amazing word eater.
Also, an analog, cellulose-based stack of pages will never run out of batteries. A phone can. But it’s also 2019, and you’re never far from a socket, are you? Or may I suggest investing in one of those nifty portable chargers?
And finally, one can seem terribly addicted to staring at a phone instead of a book for hours in public places. but who cares what other people think when you’re totally immersed in an amazing sci-fi world? nobody, that’s who.
I can hardly think of any other drawbacks. except for one huge and obvious problem: ownership.
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If you buy a physical book, it’s yours. you have it and you own it. you can lend it to your friends and forget what you did. you can give a book that you like or not. you can burn it and laugh like a maniac at the teachings you are denying the world. you can sell it.
Most e-books you buy online have some sort of digital rights manager (drm) that stipulates what you can and can’t do with your e-book. sometimes you can use an ebook file in multiple reading apps, other times a book is tied to a certain app or device.
drm and all its problems are a bit beyond the scope of this article, so before I get sucked down this rabbit hole, just say caveat emptor when buying e-books. Some places offer more reasonable terms than others. We’ll post a better guide on this soon, I promise.
I’m still a novice when it comes to reading books on the phone, but a veteran colleague told me that he buys the physical book if he really likes it. he also told me that he gets both the ebook and the audiobook so he can switch to audio when he can’t read. is advanced.
This method can be more expensive, but it ticks the nostalgia box when it comes to having a physical copy to look at from time to time, and drags along as a tribute to the effort when you move house. in any case, reading is good in any way you choose, maybe reading on your phone just helps you read a little more. which is great!
I’ve been running too long. reading a book on a phone is great. If you don’t believe me, the gutenberg project has drm-free classic books you can download to try it out. apple, amazon, kobo, and google also have pretty generous return policies, so if you don’t agree with me, you can get your money back.
nothing stops you! go and read.
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