Every Friday Parajunkee and Alison Can Read hosts Feature Follow Friday. It's a great way to get to know the blogging community and they ask fun questions!
This week's Question is:
Hard print (real thing) or Kindle/Nook, which is your favorite?
So...I already wrote a post about this. So I will just quote myself for the rest of this post. If you want to read my original post go here (I reference a pretty cool study about how e-readers ain't no thang aka are harder to emotionally connect to compared to hard print books).
To be honest, I buy most books on my e-reader now because I live in the city and it's easier to carry around my tablet/phone to read than a million books. Also, I read about four books at a time so I like to have them all handy because I'll never know which one I'm in the mood to read.
However, studies have now been done on whether we should read from an e-reader or a hard copy paper book.
And the winner is: Paper Books!The study was done by Anne Mangen at the University of Stavanger. Apparently e-readers make us less able to absorb information and readers can't remember the order of events in their stories.
According to Mangen, studies suggest that using screen devices (like iPads, kindles, nooks) might impact readers' cognitive abilities and it affects the emotional aspect of reading. What does all this mean you ask. It means that e-readers are turning us into emotionless zombie readers! (noooo) J/K it's not that serious, but it could mean that we aren't connecting to our stories in an emotional way and we're not processing story details well since we're reading it on e-readers.
Why is this happening? Apparently we need to be able to feel the pages and physically turn them, having the option to flip back and forth, fold over pages (blasphemy!), and have a tactile experience of feeling the pages during reading helps steep us in the experience of reading.
I personally have always said that the smell of books is a huge part of reading, so I can see what this study is getting at. I just didn't know that the feel of books could make me empathize with the characters more.
OOoh that's an interesting theory! I do favor the real book over the ebook any day, but I do enjoy my Indie authors whose books are greatly cheaper than the real books. But generally I've found my real books can be cheaper than e. Though I have seen ebooks go down recently. But I remember in the beginning, Amazon charged 7.99 for the paperback and 7.99 for the ebook. And that just didn't make sense to me at all! That definitely came down to person preference.
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Old Follower :)
See, that's a really interesting theory, but it's kind of not true for me. I mean as much as I connect and retain the story I've read from a physical book - I tend to the same with my Kindle and the thing I like about my Kindle is I can bookmark, take notes, and do a lot of things to take me back to different passages and quotes where I can't stand even the slightest pen mark in my physical copies!
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Suz @ A Soul Unsung
Wow, that is so interesting! Thank you for posting that study! Aw, sadly it won't deter me from reading on my Kindle. Haha! It's just so much more convenient for me! (:
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I love actual books, with the actual pages! I can touch and pet and smell them! *sigh* It's good, it's good! :D
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~Fari 0:)
When I was in NY, I was actually surprised by how many people I saw reading paperback/hard copy books on the subway. I kind of dug it. It just looks more legit, reading a hard copy of a book, hahaha.
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In any case, I think it's good to mix it up. Not do just one or the either. I think default should be reading a hard copy b/c physical books ARE wonderfully tactile (touchy touchy touchy), but there's nothing wrong with also reading kindle books.