Ebook Readers – Where More is More!

Any place where large collections of books can be found is a favourite place of mine.  I enjoy perusing the shelves of libraries and taking advantage of the informality of these places to get comfortable on the floor and read a bit.  Sometimes I get what I went looking for and other times I don’t.  But what is certain is I always leave with something interesting to me.  Large bookshops are even better – I’m a sucker for new books.  I love taking my time to move among those shelves equally as much as those of the libraries, except in shops there is the hope of coming away with a brand new book that is yours to keep – no returning required.  Books are such wonderful things besides being filled with stories and information, they give off sensations as you turn pages and trace sentences with your fingertip over textured paper and they emit smells which seem to convey age, wisdom and a mystery yet to unfold.

Naturally, I have dreamed of creating a library in my home.  I have imagined being able to dedicate an entire room to shelving on all four walls, floor to ceiling.  And then being able to buy enough books to fill the room.  This is my dream.

However, in the world as it is today, this might not necessarily be the most responsible way to collect reading material.  We all try and do our part to save the environment and that environmental issue which sits in the forefront of my mind is the deforestation of our dwindling wooded areas and the recycling and better use of paper.  Technology has allowed us to move away from the sole use of paper as a means of organisation and presentation but paper is still necessary for print media.  I have considered shifting from buying books to buying ebooks and using an ebook reader but initially I was reticent because of my deep love for books and displaying them.  Recently my father bought me an ebook reader – the Sony PRS 505.  My first realization was that I had seriously underestimated the usefulness of such a device.  It has 200mb of internal memory as well as expandable memory which means you can take anywhere between 20 to 200 ebooks with you anywhere you go anytime and all you’re carrying is a wafer thin device the width and height of a paperback novel which easily fits in your handbag or hand luggage.  When I first started uploading some of the novels I have in digital format onto the  reader it became apparent (although this should have been obvious immediately) that I am not restricted to ebooks or novels.  This device can display most formats of text documents so all your word and other work documents can be easily viewed right on your reader.  It can also display pictures and has audio playback capabilities.  It is an awesome alternative to devices such as Ipods if your focus is on mobility of text documents with a sprinkling of pictures and audio as opposed to the other way round.

So if there are any of you who, like me, are book lovers but are keen to make a move to a more environmentally friendly and extremely mobile way of collecting books, give ebook readers a try.  The only reader that I can recommend is the one that I have – Sony PRS 505.  Although my experience with other readers is limited what I can tell you is that reading on the sony reader is equally as enjoyable as reading a real book and actually a bit easier.  It is an extremely handy device to have and I am grateful that I am able to make use of one.  In fact I will give you another example of how I have recently used my ebook reader to help with the planning and execution of my upcoming wedding.  I have created thousands of documents and plans that I need to be able to show to various service providers and organisation people.  Before the ebook reader I would have to print everything (often multiple times) to convey my needs and ideas.  With the ebook reader I simply transfer the documents from my pc to the reader exactly like a flash drive and then I can show multiple people the same document without printing anything and if they need the document we make a quick transfer to their pc.  Easy peasy.

This doesn’t mean I won’t be buying books – I have certain authors whose books I collect.  But what it means is easier mobilty of more reading material and all those books that I don’t need to buy for sets can be bought digitally.  Not to mention that it’s quite a bit of fun!

If you want to ask a question about the Sony PRS 505, feel free to do so in the comments.  For more information about the Sony ebook reader, please visit www.sony.co.uk and search for the PRS 505.