Paper books vs ebooks

The other day I read an article (in Dutch) where someone contested the idea of the continuous existence of actual books made out of paper and a cover. He argued that eBooks will soon take over. Many newspapers and magazines are already disappearing and he claimed that it was just a matter of time until real books follow suit. Call me a puritan, a romantic or plain stupid, but I don’t think regular books will fade into oblivion any time soon. Let’s make a comparison between a real book and an eBook and find out why.

Source: weheartit.com

Let’s first have a look at the eBook. The eBook is light weight and easy to carry around. You can easily download your books onto the device and it will carry multiple books at the same time. If books predate 1900 you can get them for free and it apparently provides a similar reading experience overall to a regular book.

Regular books, with real pages to turn, have many qualities going for them though. First of all: the smell of books. If you like books you’ll know what you mean. Whether it’s new, second hand, a text book for your studies or a novel you pick up for fun: real books have this smell to them that your Kindle or w/e eBook reader you use will never have. Of course if you don’t like a bookish smell then eBooks are the way to go.

A paper book will give you a direct indication of how much you still have to read until you finish it. The weight and thickness of the book make for a certain anticipation, at least to me, as to how much time it will take to read and this adds to the excitement (or not if it’s an 800 page book and you have to read it within one week). It’s the thrill of turning a page and you know the book is good if you can’t stop reading want to go faster and faster.

I usually always browse through a book before reading it, and even continue to do so as I’m reading it, to see how the chapters are divided up or how many pages I have left before the chapter finishes. I’m sure you can do the same thing with an eBook, but I highly expect it to be less convenient. It’s again, the thrill, the anticipation, the excitement of coming closer to your goal: finishing the book and the satisfaction when you actually do so.

Another thing real books have going for them is the fact that they are printed on paper. I’m reading texts from a screen all day long already. I am hardly convinced that reading books from a screen is a good thing to do. I, for one, find reading from actual paper easier to do (especially with text books) as it is less tiring and makes for easy note taking and highlighting. I know eBook readers have a special lay out that makes it easier to read from a screen, but I still think that after a long day or purely for relaxation, your best bet is to pick up an actual book.

Finally I really like holding on to the things I pay for. When I use cold hard cash to buy something I also want to be able to hold it in my hands. That’s how you know you got your money’s worth in my opinion. One reason why I don’t like paying for any digital contents just yet, is because you’re not given anything tangible in return and lose all rights to the content even when you lose it due to a computer crash. When I buy a real book or a CD I will at least know it is still there unless my house burns down. The chance of a house burning down over a computer crash is slightly less likely to happen though.

Now, I don’t have any experience with eBooks on eReaders as I don’t have one. They look very convenient and I think if you are one of those people who reads multiple books at the same time it may be something to try out. I stick to one book at the time though and love all of the above about reading books in general. I guess it depends on how you read a book whether eBooks are for you. I have been tempted to look into eReaders and eBooks, but I have found it inconvenient, expensive (eBooks are sometimes more expensive than paper editions) and it is yet another device I would have to carry around that uses batteries and needs power. At least you can still read an actual book when there’s a power outage and that’s why I think real books are here to stay.

Which do you prefer? Real books or eBooks? Why?

Tour of my Book Case

As you may know I like to read the occasional book or two. Instead of showing you what I’m currently reading I though it would be nice to show you the books I have. I have quite the collection. I think I’ve got over 600 books now. Most books I bought when I was a student. As a language student you tend to buy a lot of novels for coursework etc. I also worked a job at a local library for a few years and there I always got first dibs whenever they were getting rid of stuff. And on top of that I did some side jobs for my university for which I was paid in book shop gift vouchers.

Needless to say: I accumulated quite a few books over the years. More than I have read, but I am still intend on reading them all one day. I took some pictures to give you an overview, but I also made a video in which I highlight some of my favorite books. Below you will also find an Excel file which lists all the books I have including some detailed information.

Book case 1 containing English novels/ literature, history and miscellaneous books (such as my favorites from childhood, some chicklit and random books about knitting, make up, cats etc.)

Back of book case 2 containing Dutch & World literature and Mythology/ Folklore/ Sagas/ Fairytales.

Front of book case 2 contains more books on mythology, ancient civilisations, an complete encyclopedia for women, a spelling guide (Dutch), books for my current studies as well as dictionaries, thesaurus, and a Spanish language course. (I still want to learn Spanish one day)

Book cases 3 & 4 contains mostly books related to my English studies. There’s a shelf for literary anthologies; philology (Old & Middle English), language variation and language acquistion/ language in general; American Studies; highschool teaching methods; general reference books; linguistics; journalism; teaching; travel books; music books; philosophy; cook books and art.

Would you believe me if I told you that I started out with just one book case when I first moved to this place? The bookshelves are by IKEA and called IVAR. It’s a shelving system which I think is quite handy. The bookcases were given to me by my parents. No clue where they came from.

Want to see what’s actually on my shelves then you should watch this video:

And in this document: Boekenlijst you will find the list of all books and authors including information on date of publishing and the publisher.

Do you like keeping books? What are your favorite ones to buy?

Books I do like

A week ago I posted a blog on the books I don’t like. Since there are more books that I like than those I don’t like, I think it would only be fair to also tell you about books I’ve read and which I loved. I will not list my favorite book, as I wrote about that before. Let me tell you about some of the books which are also high on my list.

Long room Old Library, Trinity College, Dublin (via weheartit.com)

1) John Niven – Kill Your Friends

Narrated by a jaded, spoiled and arrogant record company scout in the 90s who literally leaves behind dead bodies as he lives his life looking for the next big act so he can save his butt from getting sacked. Hilarious, thrilling and dark novel about living life to the max without being punished for it.

2) Martin Amis – Money

Very similar to Kill Your Friends in that the main character, John Self, is living the high life and doing tons of crazy stuff. Main difference: the outcome of the novel, which I won’t give away, but let’s just say that you shouldn’t just trust everyone as not everyone is who they seems to be.

3.) J. D. Salinger – Catcher in the Rye

Story of Holden Caulfied. Enfant terrible and a manic lazy bum who tries to get away with everything. A novel about coming of age, going against the grain and life lessons. I love this one as it’s hilarious. Not many books have me laughing out loud. This one did.

4.) Willa Cather – Song of the Lark

This book really impressed me when I read it. About Thea Kronborg from a small, fictional town called Moonstone, Colorado who becomes a famous opera singer in New York at the end of the novel. You are taken along for Thea’s journey in life. The story starts when she is a child and follows her from the moment she first takes music lessons, to becoming a teacher herself, to her leaving Moonstone and settling and finding her way in the Big Apple. I love it when books really follow one particular character from beginning to end.

5.) Carlos Ruiz Zafón – The Shadow of the Wind

This book took me some time getting into, but it’s a very very worthy read. It’s about a boy Daniel, who is allowed to pick a book from the Cemetary of Forgotten Books by his dad. He picks The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax. The boy is fascinated by the book. So much so that he tries to track more books by the same author. However, he is unsuccessful. Add his quest to find out more, a mysterious character who named himself after a character in the book, an old house on a hill in Barcelona and you get a novel with enough suspense and intrigue that you will not want to put it down.

Q: What are some of your favorite books that you would recommend to anyone who asks?

Books I don’t like

Books. If there is one thing I love it’s books. However, books are very similar to music: there’s loads out there and it’s a challenge to find the gems between the overkill that is on offer. So unfortunately, you sometimes find yourself reading a book that just doesn’t work for you. It can be anything that causes it: the writing style, the characters, the topic, etc. Sometimes it just takes time to get into a book, but I have a few books that I’ve attempted to read (some even several times), didn’t manage and have decided to never even come near them ever again.

1) Joseph Heller – Catch 22

I read some really good reviews of this book which is why I bought it. It was supposed to be hilarious and comparable in wit to Catcher in the Rye (which I love btw). That and the fact that the phrase ‘it’s a Catch 22′ was first coined in this book made me want to read it.

The story is about a man who is in the US army during WWII. He feigns illness to escape duty and well that’s pretty much it. The book mainly describes high levels of red tape (which I guess is what it’s trying to mock) which is why the guy can get away with well, pretty much anything.

The point of the book is that everything is a Catch 22, even the book itself. That sounds promising but it is also the biggest annoyance of the book. The book is around 300 pages in my edition and at around page 60 the point of the book is already stated and it just keeps going on and on and on. It becomes tedious and at page 150 I was like: yep I get the point, NEXT!

2.) Ian McEwan – Saturday

The other book which I’ve never been able to finish is this one. It was recommended to me by a friend who said it was really good. He even bought me the book for my birthday. I attempted to read it three (!!!) times. Every single time I read a bit more, but it just didn’t grab me the way I’d hoped. The third time round I was pretty much half way through and it really didn’t captivate me at all.

The story is about a man (I’ve forgotten his name) and he’s in his 50s, is a surgeon, lives in London, has a wife and two kids. One, his son still lives at home and is a musician, the other is his daughter who’s an author and lives in France. She’ll be coming over to visit and he’s very excited about that. The story starts with him not being able to sleep and watching a plane crash from his window. He his then obsessed by this crash and in the mean time he describes what his week day looks like and what he does and how much he loves his wife and yada yada yada.

Again the book just goes on and on and on, and into minor details of which patients he saw and what he usually has for lunch and how long his commute takes, etc. Trivial things which I really don’t find interesting. All the time I just kept thinking: when does the story start. The first 75 pages or so are just about his standing in front of his window, contemplating life and having a conversation with his son about the plane crash. And well… that’s it really.

When I read the book a third time I forced myself to read more as my friend had told me that after reading that first part it becomes really good. But at page 130 (out of 275 mind you) it still wasn’t interesting. Apparently that’s where the story really starts, but in my point of view, starting a book 3 times, eventually getting half way through and still not being engaged by it, signifies that it is not worth my time and effort.

Q: Which books have you started reading but never finished?

P.S. I read these books for fun. If I had to add books which I had to read for school I’d have a few more to add to the list. Post idea inspired by Alison.

My Favorite Genre of Reading

I love to read. I do have a very particular taste when it comes to books though. First of all, I absolutely despise romance novels. Anything Mills & Boon like will not enter this house! Or chicklit. I shudder at the thought of having to attempt another try at reading the remaining Shopaholic novels. That’s what I hate, which is pretty much anything girlie. Now for the likes: I like books that have nicely developing characters or where plot lines take unexpected turns. Books that make me think. Books that haunt me. I have a knack for coming-of-age novels and novels whose protagonist are weird, strange or outright insane & evil. And there is one particular genre of books that often combines all of this in story: Gothic Fiction.

In this picture (all books by Paul van Loon): Griezelhandboek (Horror hand book), Vampierhandboek (Vampire hand book), Griezelbus 3 (Bus of horror 3)

My love for Gothic Fiction started at a very young age. As a kid I quickly developed a taste for books that contained anything supernatural. As long as the stories contained vampires, witches, werewolves or flesh eating monsters I was good to go. My favorite author was Paul van Loon. I would literally eat up anything he wrote for a while.

When I got a little older, books became less important to me as my teacher told me I couldn’t read the type of books I liked the most. Most horror/ Gothic stories for children at the time were aimed at children up to the age of 12. If you were older you would have to resort to adult novels or stick to the kiddy stuff. Since my teacher forced me to read stuff I didn’t like, reading suddenly was less enjoyable for me and so I didn’t pick up any books for fun until I went to college.

Studying English, means you have to read books. Tons of books. It’s simply part of the curriculum. Every semester you take at least one course on English or American literature. Taking more is optional. In my second year I opted to enroll for one additional literature class as part of my minor in American Studies. It was called American Gothic Fiction. I enjoyed it so much that I can safely say that this course pretty much reinstated my joy for reading. These are some of the books that were on the reading list:

American Gothic Fiction: Stephen King – Needful Things, Nathaniel Hawthorne – The House of the Seven Gables, H.P. Lovecraft – At the Mountains of Madness, Richard Matheson – I Am Legend, Shirley Jackson – We Have Always Lived in the Castle

My favorite from this bunch was I Am Legend. It’s a very easy read, but the outcome of the book is magnificent. Too bad Hollywood had to go and turn into a godawful movie with Will Smith a few years ago.

Later on, once I was enrolled in the Master’s programme, I enrolled in another Gothic Fiction class. This time it combined both American and British authors and pretty much glossed over the major works in Gothic Fiction. Some of the books from that list were:

Gothic Fictions: Shakespeare – Macbeth, Bram Stoker – Dracula, Robert L. Stevenson – Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde, Henry James – Turn of the Screw, James Hoagg – Confessions of a Justified Sinner

My faves from this bunch are more abundant. All books, except for Confessions, made it into my favorites list. I even ended up writing my essay for the course on a comparison of Dracula and the aforementioned I Am Legend. You can tell I like my vampires can’t ya?

It must therefore be no wonder to you that now, after graduating and being able to read novels for fun, rather than for coursework, that I have stuck to my love for vampires. Twilight, True Blood, Vampire Diaries: I soak it all up and have read (parts of) the series or am intending to do so. I even got into Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice for a while.

However, none of these are my favorite Gothic stories. No, my absolute favorite stories are by the one and only Edgar Allan Poe (who else!). Master of suspense and author of some of the most haunting stories of his day, Poe is still liked by many today and I am one of them. His stories aren’t always as scary anymore, but you have to admit that stories such as The Pit and The Pendulum or The Tell Tale Heart are classics even in their own right.

Some of my fave Gothic novels/ stories: Joyce Carol Oates – American Gothic Tales (incl. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow etc.), Anne Rice – Interview with the Vampire, Stephanie Meyer – The Twilight Saga, Charlaine Harris – Dead Until Dark (The book to the True Blood series), Ira Levin – Rosemary’s Baby (the movie is brilliant!), Edgar Allan Poe – Forty Two Tales.

I started this post off by stating that I do not only like Gothic novels, but also novels that have slightly twisted, insane, if not evil characters. These novels do not have to be Gothic per se, but I think they do sort of fall into the whole ‘nasty’ category. What it boils down to is that as long as it’s nasty, I’ll like it. I like characters who go through extremes or great lengths to get what they want. Even though they are sometimes fools for doing so. Some of my favorite books containing ‘twisted’ characters:

John Niven – Kill Your Friends, Guy de Maupassant – Bel Ami, Flannery O’Connor – Wise Blood, Martin Amis – Money.

Last but not least, there are a few books sitting on my shelf unread and waiting to be picked up. I have quite a few of these, as I buy/ get more than I read, but here are the Gothic novels that are on the top of my ‘to read’ list:

Bret Easton Ellis – American Psycho, Wilkie Collins – The Woman in White, Poppy Z. Brite – Drawing Blood, L.J. Smith – Vampire Diaries

Q: What is your favorite genre?

I’m on a mission…

It has been months since I’ve been able to read any books for fun. All I’ve been reading is either work or school related. With my stress level rising to fever pitch over the past couple of weeks, I just knew I had to find a way to keep me sane. So, I’ve decided to re-read all the Harry Potter books and I will hopefully finish in time: before the final movie is released.

The mission is going good so far. I’m on book four, but as we all know, parts 5, 6 & 7 are all quite bulky so that will definitely slow me down. I’ve been reading about a book per week now, which, considering how busy I’ve been, is actually quite good. The last time I read all of the books was when the final book was published and at that time it took me little over a week to read all 7 of them. Though, at that time I had way more time on my hands and I could read pretty much all day long.

I hope to be done reading the books soon and hopefully I will get a chance to watch all of the movies as well. Anywayz, I am super stoked about the movie. It comes out the weekend which marks the start of my summer vacation and I really couldn’t think of a better way to start my holidays than with the final chapter of the HP franchise.

And just to get you all as riled up as I am, here’s the trailer for your enjoyment: