Paperback vs eBook – The Joy of Reading

eBook vs Paperback

I love to read, and try to do so in every possible moment that I can snatch from my schedule. It is not always possible to find time to read when you have young babies to take care of or if you work two jobs or if you are in any of other such situations.

Not everyone has the luxury to afford a home library and actually have the time to read the books eagerly and carefully chosen for reading.

Reading electronically on devices versus traditional hard cover books

But with the rapid increase of smartphones and reading devices, now we can read right from our phone in any place. That got me thinking about reading a book as a hard copy in our hands vs reading a book electronically.

I found there are pros and cons to both these methods of reading.

PC: Pixabay

Traditional Paperback

1. You can take it to a beach, park or anywhere for that matter and have a lovely time just lying down on the grass and feeling the paper in your hands while reading.
2. No problem with reading in sunlight.
3. The book does not keep worrying you to handle it carefully, even if it slides down, you don’t damage it unlike your phone or kindle.
4. And these days with such large display screens, phones tend to be awkward in hands and handling them is a little tricky while reading continuously.
5. You can easily skip parts of the book you find boring and directly go to a page you find interesting instead of scrolling endlessly.
6. Some people even use a book as a sleep-inducing agent 😉
7. Your eyes are safe when you read from a book as you won’t be staring at any light-source to read.

PC: Pixabay

Electronic books aka ebooks

1. Reading ebooks is fun, because you can always get it delivered as soon you click that ‘buy’ button. No need to wait for its arrival for even a day. Even when you buy it directly from a book store, you need to wait till you get home 😉
2. You can check out the reviews from other readers and choose to buy the book all at one place.
3. The most exciting thing for me in an electronic book is that, you can click on any word, copy it and look it up on a dictionary within seconds.
4. The meaning is even shown above the word in some readers like Kindle when you highlight the word. I used to procrastinate this part with traditional books because I am too lazy to open a dictionary and break the flow of reading a book. Then I forget the words altogether 😀
5. Cost is less compared to paper based books.
6. Most importantly, you can read it even when the light is out at night. No problem even if the baby is sleeping 🙂 You can just enable the night mode on the device and the light won’t spoil anyone’s sleep.

7. You can read while traveling too, no need to pack books with the suitcase. It is easy to access your reading device holding thousands of books than searching for books you packed in your luggage.

8. Waiting is less tiring now, as you can always be engaged, anywhere, anytime. All you need is a reading device, that could even be the kindle or kobo reader right on your phone!

9. You never run out of material to read.

With websites like BookBub notifying you about great deals on books and even free books to read that are very interesting, you can always keep you library full.

The Alchemist is my favorite book to read time and again in paperback and Sydney on a budget is my favorite ebook, my first ebook as an author 🙂

Have a great time reading and may God bless you with time to read 🙂