No, this isn't code for my ladybits, although I always want to write Barnes and Noble, asking them why the fuck they thought naming their e-reader something which can be easily misconstrued as a vagina was a good idea, but that's besides the point. This little e-reader is amazing.
I've resisted the whole e-reader phenomenon since it first came onto the scene. I thought it was stupid, because why would you buy one of these things when holding and smelling and feeling an actual book is so much better? And I'm still, at my core, of that belief. I think books are amazing little pieces of time made physical. Carl Sagan said it (and many other things) best:
A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.
My biggest gripe with books, in their real forms, is the size. I'm a pretty speedy reader, able to plow through a thousand page novel in a couple days, and bringing a multitude of books to keep up with my velocity would have required a whole suitcase dedicated only to them. Which didn't sound like a horrible idea, except for the fact that I wanted to have like, a nice towel and some sweaters so I didn't freeze to death.
And that's when I finally gave in and bought the Nook. The post-Christmas specials had it down to only $50 in price, and while it doesn't have any fancy bells and whistles, like a backlit screen, Internet access, or games, it's about as close to a book as I can get without actually having one.
The screen, which isn't a color display, looks like a piece of paper. It's that off-white page color, and it's not difficult to read in the low light of a dim room or in the blinding blaze of sunlight. You can make little notes on pages, which also turn almost instantaneously - there's a fraction of a second of delay, but that's, to me, the equivalent of having to PHYSICALLY turn a page, so hell if I really care about that.
I've heard a lot of people complain about Nooks for problems that I haven't encountered. Stuff like their battery life being terrible, or the internal filing of books being wonky, have been big sources of complaints on Internet forums. I charge up my Nook once every two weeks - and that's with reading at least an hour, if not more, on it every day. Unsure why we live in a world where that isn't adequate battery life, but there you go. As for the files, maybe it's just me, but I'm pretty anal retentive and go through and rename all my books anyway - if they're in a series the number is first followed by the title of the series, then author, then book title, and if it's a standalone book then it's just author, book title. I don't have any problem ever finding books, especially since there's that handy dandy "search" function in case I don't feel like going through 62 pages of book titles. An amazing ebook organizing program, called Calibre, is also Nook compatible, and quickly helps even the messiest libraries become manageable.
Books are easy peasy to get, and since it reads .pdf files as well as .epub, I'm not pigeonholed into only buying books off of the Barnes and Noble e-store. Most of my collection has come from Pirate Bay, or the awesome website gutenberg.org. Since my friends here all have Kindles, which read .mobi (unsupported by the Nook), I use the aforementioned Calibre to convert them to .epubs. Womp womp my life is hard!
I guess a few days ago Barnes and Noble discontinued the Nook, which is a real big shame. If you're able to find one of these little guys (Reddit said that Target was selling their remaining Nook stock for $30), I highly suggest picking it up. It's superb for what it needs to do - let you read books - and with its simple UI, expandable memory slot, and ability to root it (overwrite the preexisting operating system and load games, access the Internet, etc etc) it is the absolute best bang for your buck!
And that's when I finally gave in and bought the Nook. The post-Christmas specials had it down to only $50 in price, and while it doesn't have any fancy bells and whistles, like a backlit screen, Internet access, or games, it's about as close to a book as I can get without actually having one.
The screen, which isn't a color display, looks like a piece of paper. It's that off-white page color, and it's not difficult to read in the low light of a dim room or in the blinding blaze of sunlight. You can make little notes on pages, which also turn almost instantaneously - there's a fraction of a second of delay, but that's, to me, the equivalent of having to PHYSICALLY turn a page, so hell if I really care about that.
I've heard a lot of people complain about Nooks for problems that I haven't encountered. Stuff like their battery life being terrible, or the internal filing of books being wonky, have been big sources of complaints on Internet forums. I charge up my Nook once every two weeks - and that's with reading at least an hour, if not more, on it every day. Unsure why we live in a world where that isn't adequate battery life, but there you go. As for the files, maybe it's just me, but I'm pretty anal retentive and go through and rename all my books anyway - if they're in a series the number is first followed by the title of the series, then author, then book title, and if it's a standalone book then it's just author, book title. I don't have any problem ever finding books, especially since there's that handy dandy "search" function in case I don't feel like going through 62 pages of book titles. An amazing ebook organizing program, called Calibre, is also Nook compatible, and quickly helps even the messiest libraries become manageable.
Books are easy peasy to get, and since it reads .pdf files as well as .epub, I'm not pigeonholed into only buying books off of the Barnes and Noble e-store. Most of my collection has come from Pirate Bay, or the awesome website gutenberg.org. Since my friends here all have Kindles, which read .mobi (unsupported by the Nook), I use the aforementioned Calibre to convert them to .epubs. Womp womp my life is hard!
I guess a few days ago Barnes and Noble discontinued the Nook, which is a real big shame. If you're able to find one of these little guys (Reddit said that Target was selling their remaining Nook stock for $30), I highly suggest picking it up. It's superb for what it needs to do - let you read books - and with its simple UI, expandable memory slot, and ability to root it (overwrite the preexisting operating system and load games, access the Internet, etc etc) it is the absolute best bang for your buck!
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