# General > Literature >  Kindle or Real Book?

## JamesMcVean

Have you got one? Do you prefer the Kindle or the physical book?

Personally I now prefer the Kindle. Working away it makes my bag a lot lighter than 3 or 4 big paperbacks...lol

Cheers

James

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## rich62_uk

Was thinking of getting one for my 11 year old daughter for Christmas.... Too young or perfect ? Thoughts ?

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## Sandra_B

Love my kindle, when I can get my hands on it! Both boys have books on it and my husband has it at the moment while he travels. Still have to have real books when it comes to my favourite authors though.

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## Torvaig

I like real books; mainly because I'm too mean to spend money on a kindle! 

I get a lot of my books from the charity shops or from friends and of course there is always the library!

I like to see my books keeping each other company and readily available if I want to loan one to a friend.

I also have a habit of having two or three books on the go at the one time although with the memory becoming a bit foggy, I think it's time to cut back!

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## unicorn

I thought about getting one but I think I prefer my books the old fashioned way, you can't take a kindle in the bath lol.

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## Dadie

The kindle is ok for when away from home as its not heavy.
Ideal for reading at the airport or on a sun lounger....just make sure someone is watching your bag when you take a dip!
But at home I love to read in the bath.
Fall asleep with a book and drop it out the bed.
Wouldnt fancy the kidles chances there.

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## pat

Just got a kindle last week, but have not used it for reading yet - loaded a pile of books on for when I am on the move, will not have to lug heavy books.
Kindle not for bath or bed - splash it or drop it - so will remain for when passing time or travelling.
Also still have a huge pile of paper books still to read.
After Christmas they will drop drastically in price I am sure.

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## JamesMcVean

Gave my old kindle to my 9yr old daughter - she loves it - Dropped mine several times lol but has a leather(ish) case and no damage.
Reason I gave the kindle to daughter - she wanted the harry potter books and paid 50odd quid for the set...then remembered when we got home that I had the lot of them on my own kindle - Suppose it is hard to keep track if you have LOTS of them lol

I went on Ebay and paid 3quid for a DVD disc with 15000Scifi Fantasy Ebooks - 

You also might like to know that there is a free online program to convert all book formats to Kindle - 

www.calibre-ebook.com

Very simple and you can batch convert and edit titles etc to make it more pleasing to the eye.

Dont suppose the bath is a good idea unless you are very careful - you can use it easily with one hand.

Plus another good thing with the kindle is the ability to alter the size of the text - making it easier on the eyestrain for older readers! lol

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## rich62_uk

Well I bought one today for her, its smaller than I expected and thinner so hope its fairly robust ...

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## annemarie482

i personally prefer a book.
i like to turn the pages, i like the smell of a new book too! lol
i spend enough time looking at the laptop screen as it is without looking at another one.

like the idea of the kindle though.

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## Metalattakk

I won't have one, and nor will the wife.

She buys her books second-hand from amazon.co.uk, then reads them and sells them back on when she's done. Basically, her reading costs her next to nothing.

You can't do that with a Kindle.

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## trix

na, am no keen on a kindle either. 

i hev too many "deid wood" books that i hev til get thro before i get a kindle. i hev ma own little library goin on here. i love love love books, i hev them ivrywhere. in ma car, in ma bathrooms, in ma kitchen, at ma side, in ma bag....in ma beid! i niver leave home withoot one. i love 'e wie the feel, an look. i love thur smell. i love how i can find ma page no problem withoot usin a bookmark.

wheniver i go off somewhere i can always remember 'e book that i wis readin 'at 'e time.

 'e auld cheil wis goin til get me a kindle for ma birthday but i wanted a tom tom instead. then he asked if i wanted one for christmas but i asked for a bookcase  :: 

i ken if i do get one i mite forget all aboot ma faithful little friends.

i think ma love o' books all stemmed fie when i wis little. i wis ayie grounded. one day efter bein bad, i said til 'e auld cheil, "am no worried, il choost lie an' watch 'e telly"

he cut 'e plug off ma telly.....

i said, "fine, il read"  ::  

i wis grounded for 'e whole summer holidays once!!

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## katarina

I've got a kindle, but to be honest, if I'd had it on trial I wouldn't have spent money on it.  But it is great for going on holiday as I usually go weighed down by books.  I do like to see a well stocked bookcase, I like the feel and smell of a book, and if I enjoyed it, I like to pass it on.  Kindle is good too, but I do not think it will ever replace a real book.

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## Dadie

If I had to choose an "electronic book" I would want one that does other stuff too.
Sort of one with games and other apps on it as well.....not just a book.
But I love getting a brand new book no-one else has read or opened before me especially if it comes plastic wrapped....Im a bit possessive over my books..no-one gets to look or touch them until Im finished...no pages folded down or spines bent!

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## Sarah

I love real books, the smell, the nice designs on the cover, and the thought of having something new  ::  I love buying them too.

Plus, I buy books from charity shops, then give them back. I don't read books a second time (with a few exceptions), so there really is no point in having a Kindle filled with books.

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## rich62_uk

Well its a hit, my daughter does not put the kindle down ! Battery last for ages too so all is good.  :Smile: .

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## Gronnuck

Am I right in thinking that a Kindle user can only borrow a book from another Kindle user for a one off period of two weeks?  At least with a real book you can pass it around as many friends as you like and then hand it into a Charity Shop once its a bit worn.
Another thing I've found is that eBook downloads are often as expensive as the paperback.  How can that be when there is no paper, board or packaging?
Maybe I'm just being overly cynical as usual.

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## Kenn

Got to be a real book every time for me. like others I will buy secondhand as well as new but still have many a well thumbed tome on the shelves here, the criteria being that if I read a book and enjoy it, I will come back and read it a second time or more.

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## Dadie

Borrowing a book for 2 weeks would be ample time for me to read it.
I can devour a book in a day(well night) if I get into it!
It did take me 3 nights to read the lord of the rings last time though....
And I have just finished Inheritance over 2 nights because the battery on my E book reader gave up before me!
Thats one disadvantage I never thought about...batteries dont go flat on a proper book!

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## rich62_uk

My daughter liked reading books before she got the Kindle but now all she does is read. I really feel for the younger generation of readers this is the way to get them interested. Its light and compact easy to carry around or slip in a bag. The charge in it does last a long while. Its also smart looking which and more 'fashionable' than a 'book' to read hopefully making it interesting to boys as they seem to be left behind in the reading stakes. You can down load a book in seconds and many of them are free. You get to read a sample of the book before you buy so are not really missing out on anything. If it can get my children off the xbox and reading instead then I am happy !

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## pat

Have now been using my kindle for a few weeks and getting to like it but of course still cannot read it in the bath!
I download mainly free books but if I do want a book will buy, have bought a few which have caught my eye and look interesting.
Paid 2.99 for Alistair Darlings book, it was on special from 16.99 - would not pay more than 2.99 for it - wanted to read it as his mother was from the island and he comes up here fairly often, he was also my MP when living in Edinburgh, only got a few pages into it at the moment.
Will be traveling next week so have downloaded a few books I fancy reading whilst away.
Have paid for a few fun books - started reading one two nights ago, have difficulty putting it down as I find it so amusing.
It is also very good that people cannot see what you are reading, when traveling I always seem to notice the people striding through travel centres with 'the latest must read' prominently held in hand on very much on display on top of hand luggage as if to say 'look at my reading'.
Two senior males I used to work with at various times were obviously ashamed of their reading matter as they always hid their books in a large autobiography - one used to read hundred of westerns and the other chap read all the mills and boon books - with a kindle nobody knows what you are reading.

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## Dadie

Oh!
My reading material has always been varied and I just love a book...sometimes any book!
I used to have a cardboard box of really trashy westerns...the series was called Edge, after the main character.
I would read them at work(teabreak and lunchbreak) just as happily as reading a Terry Pratchett or a Wilbur Smith...sometimes you just want light reading..othertimes something more heavy...or a magazine from Focus, new Scientist, to take a break or even have ended up reading the hello kitty mag...picked up my 5 yo reading material by mistake ...ended up flicking through it though!...eyebrows would be raised ..but not a word said!

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## pat

Totally agree with you Dadie, my reading material is very very varied and I could not care who sees what I am reading but the two males concerned were both my very senior bosses in different parts of the country but both obviously did not like to be seen reading what they considered to be unsuitable reading material for them.
I have 4 kids joke books, a funny book about police life, a couple of humour books, a few biographies, a few mystery, a few romance downloaded for this trip - when travelling I only like light books that you can set down and pick up, requiring no concentration.  Joke books are easy as you get so many interruptions when travelling, on train folk getting off/in, trolley, ticket collector, if flying you are sitting waiting for the flight to be called, then up and down for toilet breaks, trolley dollies coming round, neighbour chatting to you so always losing place, joke book does not matter just open and read you do not worry about losing thread of story, but that is my preference.

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## Dadie

Just thinking of loading up my tablet(yup its not a kindle and its not an ipad ..it is more like an ipad in what it does though) with books for the kids too....Early reader stuff at about the Chip and Kipper level 3/4 for Lauren and level 1/2 for Iona...useful when having to sit through the other one doing something, that they shouldnt join in with, but I have no real time to go somewhere/home etc..and come back to pick them up...
Might stop them from playing with angry birds and the talking tom cat!
Any suggestions on free/cheap books?

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## katarina

> My daughter liked reading books before she got the Kindle but now all she does is read. I really feel for the younger generation of readers this is the way to get them interested. Its light and compact easy to carry around or slip in a bag. The charge in it does last a long while. Its also smart looking which and more 'fashionable' than a 'book' to read hopefully making it interesting to boys as they seem to be left behind in the reading stakes. You can down load a book in seconds and many of them are free. You get to read a sample of the book before you buy so are not really missing out on anything. If it can get my children off the xbox and reading instead then I am happy !


You can get books for 99p  but they are usually rubbish!  You can get the classics for free. Otherwise a book costs about £1 less than the real one.  However, the thought of no more libraries, no more well stocked book-shelves, fills me with dismay!   Don't think it will ever happen though.
The best thing about kindle?  Lightweight and portable.  Can increase size of font when eyes get tired.  Can download a book in an instant.
The worst thing?  Getting to a really interesting bit when the battery runs out!

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## David Banks

The only thing that may ever tempt me to go to e-books may be the possibility of increased font size as and when my eyesight grows dim. But there will be a lot of kicking and screaming involved.
The time may come when archaeologists search the past electronically. What happens if there is a change in the magnetic poles, we temporarily lose our magnetic protection, we get bombarded by particles from solar flares and - woops - we just lose a generation's worth of (irreplacable) first editions from a generation yet to come?
Long live real books.

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## Pony

I didnt like the thought of kindle much but got one for my xmas and have hardly set it down since. I like real books but its great having both. I like my book shelves for bigger books but rarely bother keeping  paperback novels cos I read so many of them -  so thats where kindle is great. Now I grab all the latest paperbacks cheap as ebooks on amazon (all the ones Ive priced have been at least a couple of quid cheaper than tescos paperbacks) AND classics are free. Love how it remembers your page and the dictionary pop up if you come across a word you dont recognise meaning of. Also find the battery lasts ages and charges quickly and the screen is not like a computer screen - it doesnt give eyestrain as I thought it would. Had it - what 3 weeks now and read 5 books already. There is still always gonna be books Id want to have the paper copy for but kindle is great for everything else.

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## catherine251

I love, love, love my Kindle, I have always been an avid book reader until my partner bought me a Kindle for my birthday, I have never looked back, I love the fact that you can get books instantly, when I want to read a certain book, I can have it available within 30 seconds, I am quite impatient, I don't like having to wait for new releases to be sent to me, I want to read them straight away, I would spend all day & night reading my kindle if I didn't have to work, look after the kids etc....definately a kindle lover.

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## David Banks

Yesterday, my daughter was home briefly at lunchtime. She had picked-up a book for her daughter, and left it (innocently) on the coffee table. When my 6-year-old granddaughter arrived home from school, she wandered into the sitting room, saw the book, picked it up, sat on the sofa and promptly started reading it - with no comments or actions by me.

No kindle could EVER do that.

PS: the book had been "ordered" on-line from the library

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## Dadie

I dont know....
I had my tablet pinched today by my 3yo and she sat and fiddled with it..got the kindle books up... and read UG and OG by herself...
She calls it mums innotab though!
And yes there is loads and loads of kids books in the house...every room seems to have books in it within easy reach, including, the bathroom!

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## EDDIE

> Was thinking of getting one for my 11 year old daughter for Christmas.... Too young or perfect ? Thoughts ?


If it engourges ure daughter to read it will be agood thing i know i never read books but yet i can quite happily surf the internet read on there  i find that really weird but if gadget device engourges people to read and learn that can only be a positive thing

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## rich62_uk

Totally agree Eddie, and it has ! Find the kindle and you find my daughter lmao.

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## RecQuery

I really do prefer the Kindle or another e-ink e-book reader and though I've always read a lot I now find myself reading even more. The purpose of a book is to convey information, ideas or stories it doesn't matter whether it's a paper book, an audio book or an e-book. That being said the good things about the Kindle are:

Access to many free books via free classics on Amazon, offers on Amazon or project Gutenberg.The Highland libraries don't have it but yet but you can even rent e-books for your local library.The battery lasts me for about 30-40 days and that's with some pretty heavy and frequent reading.Amazon have excellent customer service and have replaced even out of warranty Kindles.Generally, unless the publisher is one of those big ones that joined Apple on their price fixing scheme then e-books are a good chunk cheaper.You don't have to carry a lot of heavy books with you.You can easily lookup works, makes notes and have automatic books marks.There's a cheap cover specifically for reading in the bath or in a pool or whatever if you're one of those people. Sorry no book paper air freshener yet though.If you subscribe to Amazon Prime (£49 a year) you can get a lot of free books, library style (http://www.thestreet.com/story/11298...g-library.html)If you have multiple Kindles on the same account they can share e-books.If you already own the paper book then you're well within your rights to download a pirated copy of the ebook. It's covered under the fair use provision under format translation and backup.
I'm probably missing a few things there are just that many advantages.

On a side note here's some potentially useful things for the Kindle:

Daily free Kindle books (http://bestfreekindlebooks.blogspot.com/) there's a link for UK specific stuff at the top of the page.Free Kindle tips and tricks book (http://evanfosmark.com/files/books/index.html).Probably the best e-book management and conversion application for any e-book reader (http://calibre-ebook.com/).A simple tool to save web pages and articles for reading later on your Kindle (http://www.instapaper.com/).Popular e-book forum there's also a guide here only installing customer screensavers.Again under fair use if you want to remove DRM from the e-books that have it for backup purposes etc, check here for some utilities including a Calibre add-on that makes it really easy.Jungle-search.com is a search engine designed to find all sort of e-books from Amazon. In the price ranges from & to field enter 0. As of today, there are almost 29,000 free Kindle e-books.KindleGen+Kindle Previewer Amazon's tools to create/view mobi files.Wordcycler Two-way Instapaper sync.Instapaper2kindle One-way Instapaper sync.Readability All browsers add-on to send current page to your Kindle.Send to Kindle Google Chrome extension.Send to Kindle Firefox/Safari/IE/Chrome extension.SENDtoREADER Send AND edit web pages to your kindle. Chrome extension.K2pdfopt Optimizes PDFs for viewing on Kindle.Papercrop PDF rebuilding utility.PdfMasher user driven PDF to HTML converter.Briss PDF cropping tool.PDF scissors PDF cropping tool.Kindle Collections Calibre plugin to manage collections.Kindle Collection Manager Collections manager.Kindelabra Collections manager.Mangle Manga converting tool.JPEGtoPDF Convert image files into PDF files.Kindlefeeder Send your RSS feeds to your Kindle.
  If you're going to give one to a child and you're worried about them hammering your debit/credit card buying books. It might be a good idea to create a separate account just for them, don't tie a credit/debit card to it and give them gift certificates. Just buy an e-mail certificate and give them the code or apply it yourself no need to wait for one in the post unless it's for a birthday or something.

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## Tuoni

Personally I like real books, I know you can have many books on Kindle.  But nothing beats having a real book to read, its something you can go back to time and again.  And as a collector of books I prefer the real thing, plus I am not that  good at reading things on screen for long periods of time.  :Smile:

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## rich62_uk

Daughters kindle broke so we phoned up Amazon kindle and they sent us another one free of charge ! All they wanted was the old one back.... Fantastic customer service lol.

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## ShelleyCowie

Im a converted kindle lover! Me and the hubby have dozens and dozens of books (we both re-read books several times) but our book case was overflowing. For my birthday he got me a kindle and i instantly loved it, even though i said i never would get one. 

I have downloaded about 20 free books and loved them all. And about 15 low priced ones (99p) and again....loved them all. 

Also i send books to him, he sends books to me. And i find that because i can make the text larger, i dont get head aches (dont need glasses just eyes ache and head) 

I have a leather case for my kindle so find it really robust with or without it. A happy kindle person here  :Smile:  so much lighter than lugging books everywhere (hubbys books are The Wheel of time so can you imagine carrying them? They weigh a tonne!)

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## changilass

I like and have both.  

I prefer a real book when reading at home, but rather than lugging books around when on the move, the kindle is great.

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