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There are now a number of electronic book readers on the market which display books purchased as e-books or in electronic form.  I’ve been quite skeptical about this book readers but the other day an acquaintance of mine showed me hers.

When she had first purchased her book reader she had been very enthusiastic about it.  She travels a lot for work and the storage capacity of these book readers held real appeal.  To be away and have such a choice of books available to you seemed amazing.  All those long plane journeys and wasted airport time could now be filled with hours and hours of reading.

Then she seemed to go off the book reader.  She didn’t like the reading expereince on it and she took a dislike to several books she had read on it simply due to the fact of reading on it.  She made a number of excuses about the way the expereince of reading on the book reader made her feel and I thought my own uncertain feelings about these machines had been justified.

But she persisted, became more familiar with the reader’s capabilities and grew to really like it again.  When she showed it to me, it was firmly on her list of ‘great gadgets to own’ and she was again very happy with it.  She thought that there was a certain amount of getting used to it which she had failed to acknowledge before.

The little electronic gizmo she showed me didn’t seem very robust – a concern for those of us who are not always careful with things.  And it didn’t seem very big.  I just glanced at it really because I’m not tech-savvy and I would need time to acquaint myself with even the most straight forward features.

Now I don’t travel much so the storage capacity does not hold a great deal of appeal to me.  And I am uncertain whether the standard has really been settled for electronic and downloadable books.  I would hate to buy a machine which then locked me into buying all my books from one source.  Until I am convinced that this issue has been fully addressed I won’t be buying one.

But there will always be purists who will want the feel of a ‘real’ book in their hands and who won’t want to use a screen gesture to turn a page.  However I do believe that books in general might well survive if these little gadgets are embraced.  Young people with their familiarity with screen media and their ease of using all the latest technology are more likely to be drawn towards books (which I believe have been a distance second on the entertainment front compared with entertainment such as computer and electronic games) in electronic form.

So while I doubt that there is going to be a big demand for these book readers among the over 45s, they will probably be embraced by the younger generation.  And having said that I have started to see them around – in coffee shops, among colleagues and in other various locations so perhaps their popularity is already growing.

Happy reading.

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This book club blog is being created to develop a forum for information about books. If you’ve got a comment or some books to share, please post back.

How often do we go into a book shop and find ourselves faced with an unfathomable amount of choice? Given the vast numbers of books published each year, and the cost of books, especially here in Hong Kong, what are some of the trusted ways of picking a book that you will enjoy, rather one that leaves you thinking you’ve been wasting your time and your money?

Of course, you can choose a novel written by a writer you’ve read and enjoyed before.  But this is a bit limiting as it doesn’t introduce you to new writers.  You can do research about different books online and in a future blog post I’d be happy to share some of my favorite websites for finding out about books.

I often check the long and short lists of well known literary prizes and read some of the comments written about those books.  I’ve found this to be a great way of finding out about new books and new writers.

There are a number of well-known literary prizes – The Man Booker Prize, The Orange Prize, The Pulitzer Prize, The Costa Prize.  I’ve recently come across a few others as well – The Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, The Giller Prize.  And there are prizes for specific genres of writing too.

These prizes generally name a long-list of contenders, followed some weeks or months later by a short-list.  Finally there is an announcement of the winner. 

If you familiarize yourself with the eligibility for the different prizes there might be a particular prize that you become interested in. It is possible to find out about long-lists, short-lists and previous winners from the website dedicated to the prize in question. It is even possible to set email alerts so you are notified when the release dates approach.

So next time you are in a book shop and faced with a large choice of new books and no idea where to start, look for a shelf containing prize winners.  This might help.

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