Traditionalists Vs The Future

Books are a massive part of our lives - huge!  However, as I sit here today, I have to admit the new e-books that are out there are pretty tempting.  They look so tiny and wonderful and some of them are free to download onto my ipod Touch4 ... and you know, I have done just that in the last 20 minutes.

I know, I know... I've been bantering on saying it's not a real book.  However, there's some books out there that would cost me huge amounts of money to purchase normally and I'm only going to read them once.  So, why not get them for free from Apple and then I can delete them when I want to?  Well, I looked through their massive list of books on their books page on the iTunes store (yep, they sell more than just music) and found three books I've wanted to either own or read:  'The Art of War' by Sun Tzu, 'Dreaming Psychology' by Sigmund Freud and 'On the Origins of Species by Means of Natural Selection' by Charles Darwin.  And these books were free!  I didn't pay a single penny for them and they were just sitting there waiting for me to read them.

Now, I may not get around to reading all three of these books - after all I've read one of the already and just wanted to have on my iPod in case I needed to use its great sayings.  However, the other two are by wonderful people who I've always wanted to read but their books are very expensive and I can't afford them.
Another reason why I got a few books on my iPod is that when I'm out and don't have a real book with me, I can always whip this out and catch a couple of pages on something interesting while I'm waiting for somebody, or a bus or train.  And these books are always there for me to read whenever I want.

So, have you found that you still love traditional books, but have a few e-books hidden away on your smart phone or iPod just in case you're waiting in line at the bank, or out shopping and you're waiting for a taxi or a bus, and you have a book or two on your phone to flip through while your hanging around there at the bus stop?  Well, this is why I thought to get these.  Well, until my next post, happy reading.