Do you own an ebook reader?

My mother does.
I tried to use it one day but I just couldn’t. Even when I forced myself to.
I ended up putting it down and getting a real book to read.
Using an ebook reader takes all the fun and the meaning out of a book. It just doesn’t feel the same.
They are a useless invention in my opinion.

I recently bought a Kindle and I have splashed out on a lot of titles I normally wouldn’t have bought. My overall expenditure on reading has increased, in the short term at least. I still buy printed books and I still borrow titles from my local library. For holiday reading I plan to use my Kindle whereas last year I would have bought a couple of paperbacks so there is a slight decrease in my spending on traditional books.

I agree with Stephen Fry that electronic books can exist side by side with print. It is however very easy to order printed and electronic copies online and this is definitely a challenge to bookshops.

Never!

No. I own books. Lots of books. Lots and lots of books.

I have a kindle and I’ve filled it with tons of free books, and cheap ones from new authors I would never otherwise have read. It hasn’t stopped me buying and reading paper books though.

I use the Kindle and iBooks apps for my iPad. I have found it very handy on trips and was surprised to discover that – reading is reading. I see myself using both until paper publication is subsumed – and I am a librarian.

I have an iPad, and use several to preview books. If I really enjoy it, which is often, I will download the entire book. When I REALLY like a book I
will buy the hard copy. I actually bought more physical
books before ereaders, because I couldn’t find all of them in a library. I have donated several hundreds to the library. Now my collection of physical books is smaller, but contains only those which I re-read over and over.

@Janbb, before my accident I was headed for a MLS, and I know how much your comments mean. Thank you for your comment.

I have bought kindle text books thinking it would be useful to be able to make notes and highlight passages etc. Then I discovered you can’t actually print those notes so they are only available to me in printed form. I find that pretty well useless. I think they would be good for novels and portability, but I also still love ‘real’ books. I think they do have a place though and eventually e-books will become more and more prevalent. Publishers are certainly moving in that direction.

I have a Pandigital Novel, which I have populated with public-domain works. I still have a million books.

I have a Kindle and put the Kindle app on my Droid phone. This is superior to always carrying a paperback around for when I am stuck waiting in lines etc. Now I can always have something to read when I am bored/waiting. I still read printed books, but the ebook has made the “killing time” element of my life much better.

What @janbb and @flutherother said. I was part of the “us and them” camp until my sister forced my hand and gave me a Nook for Christmas. Having the ereader enhances the book experience. I had to do a bunch of traveling this spring, and I was relieved to not be hauling books in my carry-on. I am delighted to not have to handle large awkward hardcovers with my small arthritic hands. I like that I can find some out-of-print titles for very little (or no) money. I still buy and read paper books, there’s room in the world for ebooks and paper books, and no need to form factions.

Yea. It’s called a computer. :P

My netbook is roughly book sized, so sometimes I’ll download PDFs on it and rotate them so it feels like I’m reading a book.

I’m amused that there does seem to be a sense of betrayal when people use ereaders by those that don’t. Do people who so rampantly dislike ereaders also eschew the enjoyment of the film industry because live theater gives one so much more of an experience? Or, as the Stephen Fry quote above indicates, do you never use an escalator because stairs are so much better an experience? There is room for all forms of art and information delivery in the world. The Nook has not made my thousands of paper books obsolete, anymore than my telephone has made personal face-to-face communication obsolete.
@janbb says it best. “Reading is reading.” If the work can’t stand up to a slight format change, it’s not worth my time and attention, whether it be paper or virtual.

I’ve always preferred live theater to movies.

@atlantis : So you never go to movies because they’re not live? Or do you go to movies also because they have something to offer as well? My point was that there is no need to be loyal to only one type of thing.
I prefer live theater, too. but I also love movies. :-)

And do you guys know how hard it is to track down all the John Carter of Mars books in paper? Geez.

I enjoy the theater much more. Once I saw Hamlet in London. Jude Law was playing Hamlet. Verdict: Actors are much more effective live!

Not really, but I have a lot of PDF files on my laptop and phone; enough to replace entire shelves worth of RPG rulebooks… if it weren’t for the fact that some things are best handled in formats that let you flip dozens of pages at a time and view multiple books simultaneously.

I completely agree with Stephen Fry on this. Books are timeless. However, bookstores are not. So, while there will always be tangible books (regardless of emergent technology), we might see bookstores start to be less and less prominent.

So far, no: no need or desire for it. And I think there will always be a need for low-tech written material that does not plug in, does not depend on a power supply, and does not require a light source other than daylight or candlelight. I think our current profligate use of energy will come to an end in our children’s lifetime, if not our own, and I hope they will have had the sense to hang onto hard copies of the stuff that matters.

Nope, but I see the value in them. My dad travels a lot and I think an eBook reader would be great for him. I would buy one myself if a) they had my law school textbooks on them and b) I could use it during my exams but this is not the case. Still, I have the kindle app on my computer and droid and I love the kindle (and other readers) for two reasons:
1) They significantly lowers the barrier to entry for new writers. Anyone can write and “publish” a book and have it spread through their friends and, eventually, word of mouth. I have friends who have published on the kindle and had some success this way.
2) I can find and read books that are otherwise hard-to-find. There were a couple of Asimov books that were either out of print or so unpopular that I couldn’t find them. Luckily, the kindle store had them.