Fishing For A Friend

I'm holding out for the new iPad2 that's expected to arrive in the UK next week.
I've also researched the Kindle and there is a rumour that the Kindle 4 might be released in a matter of months, twice as big as the current small screen and displaying in colour too, but still very much the non-glare e-reader.
Very soon there will be two good choices to read books electronically, via Apple Store or Amazon.

Have any of you fishes managed to read a whole book with an e-reader and gone back for more? Do you really forget about the whole technology when you are immersed in your reading and not notice that you have a little gadget in your hand first and foremost? Is it possible to curl up with a Kindle?

I dont see myself buying any kind of e-reader soon.
Problems with my eyes make reading text from a screen painful after about half an hour.

Then theres the sterility of them.. I suppose some people might like that but....my old books are like old friends, the smell and the feel of the paper between my fingers, each book is different..
The ones Ive inhierited from family or been given as gifts are most special knowing someone who loved me sought out that book and in the case of my fathers books he read and sometimes made little notations in the margins, to see his writing , his words , it brings him close to me.
Holding the books given to me on my 17th birthday remembering us all laughing around the dinner table as he handed them over saying that now at least I wouldn't have to nick his copies..Happy memories.

No I'll stick to the paper versions it makes reading a much warmer expierence

The demise of the book is upon us...how sad!

I agree with what Freya says plus its such a pleasure to wander round a bookshop in much the same way as it used to be with a recordshop, flicking through cd's is ok but not the same and soon HMV will no longer exist and Waterstones won't be far behind!

Long live the he paperback!

So here we are, a month later. iPad2s are still unavailable all over the UK, after their sell-out inside 60 minutes on the UK launch day. I keep popping into local gadget stores and the salesmen say "no".

So I got a Kindle. I'm on my fourth book now and it is great. I bought a leather cover that allows me to open it like a book and sometimes when the contact lenses are out and I don't feel like spectacles I change the typeface to something bigger and it works for me. I find once you get into the e-book it is the same sensation: you just read and forget about your environment. I can very much recommend it. And actually, I predict books will die out. When you've seen the process of purchasing an e-book and a minute later it arrives in the palm of your hand, that has got to be a winner for the future. When the book is finished, I don't have to store it on a shelf and dust it ever so often.

Meanwhile, I've ordered an iPad2 on Apple's website. They confirmed my order and promised to deliver in a month. Pathetic.

With e-readers like Apple’s new iPad and Amazon’s Kindle touting their vast libraries of digital titles, some bookworms are bound to wonder if tomes-on-paper will one day become quaint relics. But the question also arises, which is more environmentally friendly: an e-reader or an old-fashioned book?

To find the answer, we turned to life-cycle assessment, which evaluates the ecological impact of any product, at every stage of its existence, from the first tree cut down for paper to the day that hardcover decomposes in the dump. With this method, we can determine the greenest way to read.

(A note about e-readers: some technical details — for instance, how those special screens are manufactured — are not publicly available and these products vary in their exact composition. We’ve based our estimates on a composite derived from available information. It’s also important to keep in mind that we’re focusing on the e-reader aspect of these devices, not any other functions they may offer.)

Step 1: Materials

One e-reader requires the extraction of 33 pounds of minerals. That includes trace amounts of exotic metals like columbite-tantalite, often mined in war-torn regions of Africa. But it’s mostly sand and gravel to build landfills; they hold all the waste from manufacturing wafer boards for the integrated circuits. An e-reader also requires 79 gallons of water to produce its batteries and printed wiring boards, and in refining metals like the gold used in trace quantities in the circuits.

A book made with recycled paper consumes about two-thirds of a pound of minerals. (Here again, the greatest mineral use is actually gravel, mainly for the roads used to transport materials throughout the supply chain.) And it requires just 2 gallons of water to make the pulp slurry that is then pressed and heat-dried to make paper.

Step 2: Manufacture

Fossil Fuels: The e-reader’s manufacture, along a vast supply chain of consumer electronics, is relatively energy-hungry, using 100 kilowatt hours of fossil fuels and resulting in 66 pounds of carbon dioxide. For a single book, which, recycled or not, requires energy to form and dry the sheets, it’s just two kilowatt hours, and 100 times fewer greenhouse gases.

Health: The unit for comparison here is a “disability adjusted life-year,” the length of time someone loses to disability because of exposure to, say, toxic material released into the air, water and soil, anywhere along the line.

For both the book and the e-reader, the main health impacts come from particulate emissions like nitrogen and sulfur oxides, which travel deep into our lungs, worsening asthma and chronic coughing and increasing the risk of premature death. The adverse health impacts from making one e-reader are estimated to be 70 times greater than those from making a single book.

Step 3: Transportation

If you order a book online and have it shipped 500 miles by air, that creates roughly the same pollution and waste as making the book in the first place. Driving five miles to the bookstore and back causes about 10 times the pollution and resource depletion as producing it. You’d need to drive to a store 300 miles away to create the equivalent in toxic impacts on health of making one e-reader — but you might do that and more if you drive to the mall every time you buy a new book.

Step 4: Reading

If you like to read a book in bed at night for an hour or two, the light bulb will use more energy than it takes to charge an e-reader, which has a highly energy-efficient screen. But if you read in daylight, the advantage tips to a book.

Step 5: Disposal

If your e-reader ends up being “recycled” illegally so that workers, including children, in developing countries dismantle it by hand, they will be exposed to a range of toxic substances. If it goes through state-of-the-art procedures — for example, high-temperature incineration with the best emissions controls and metals recovery — the “disability adjusted life-year” count will be far less for workers.

If your book ends up in a landfill, its decomposition generates double the global warming emissions and toxic impacts on local water systems as its manufacture.

Some of this math is improving. More and more books are being printed with soy-based inks, rather than petroleum-based ones, on paper that is recycled or sourced from well-managed forests and that was produced at pulp mills that don’t use poisons like chlorine to whiten it. The electronics industry, too, is trying to reduce the use of toxic chemicals, and to improve working conditions and worker safety throughout its far-flung supply chains.

So, how many volumes do you need to read on your e-reader to break even?

With respect to fossil fuels, water use and mineral consumption, the impact of one e-reader payback equals roughly 40 to 50 books. When it comes to global warming, though, it’s 100 books; with human health consequences, it’s somewhere in between.

All in all, the most ecologically virtuous way to read a book starts by walking to your local library.


Oh yeah i prefer curling up with bottle of wine and a book

Interesting detailed responses, particularly by marineblack who seems to be an excellent researcher.

Yes, focusing on the green credentials there are a few factors where I, the user, can also make a big difference. For example I will not replace my e-reader a short while down the line, just because a younger model is available. I intend to put this little machine through its paces. I also have in mind that I will swap my unit with someone else once I have clocked up say 200 books or so and then give someone else the benefit of picking through my choice of downloads and read what interests them, whilst I do the same on someone else's Kindle.

Marineblack's description of the manufacturing and recycling process is detailed, but I feel the downside of books has not been given fair and equal assessment.

What about also assessing convenience? E-readers are accessible, portable, storable and mostly cheaper. There is a handsome collection of older works available absolutely free or at ridiculously small charge. I have for example downloaded a collection by Jules Verne for about £1.40 which is good value for me even if I do not read all 22 in that collection and it's a marginal profit for the seller. I will very much be tempted to catch up with old classics and I am trying to read a free book for every pricey one that is of newer date.

So what are the inconveniences of using an e-reader? It's still early days for me after my short user experience, but some stick out: there is still limited availability, you cannot peep at the last page without losing your marker and you better not pour your red wine over it!

Very interested in reading Marineblack's breakdown. Despite being a staunch advocate of the good old book, I also like to try to keep up with latest developments. A friend loves her e-reader as she can take it camping & not worry about a light!! Have any e-readers noticed any efect with their eyes though?? If I've been on the lap-top before bed my eyes feel strained whereas reading a book relaxes - I can't imagine relaxing at night with a screen!

By now I've got all the toys: the Kindle, the iPad2 and the usual books made from dead trees. I have to say, I am using all three. I am now comfortable with the Kindle, able to select a book, going backwards and forwards and filing the finished read in a speacial folder to keep the list of available reads tidy. I've also got the Kindle App on the iPad and it has different advantages: it's in colour, larger than the postcard sized Kindle, but it has a reflective surface which is a nuisance when reading for long periods. When I wanted to get myself a computer manual to figure out how to get the finer points of a Wordpress Blg project sorted, I opted for a paper book: it's next to me, dog eared and with yellow highlighter going all through it and it is exactly right for me.

To respond to Hometerry's wish to find specific passages in the Bible - I don't know yet how you can browse with intention. In fact, my guilty secret is that from tome to time I go to a bookshop and flick throug pages to see what a book is all about, and I get a feeling for that book quicker than with an e-reader or a description on Amazon.

On balance, the Kindle is a fabulous medium to read straight forward text, pile it all in there without weight to carry and store it afterwards without a shelf to dust. If you want to flick backwards and forwards, use it like a manual or give it to a friend later, then it is better to use a "dead tree version".