book $

e-book prices fuel outrage -- and innovation

i've had an ongoing "argument" with rip about e-books vs traditional books. and every time we can't agree because i feel like he isn't qualified to. in the last 10 years he, on average, has read less than two books a year. i more than double his annual reading rate in a month.

i hope paperback books keep coming out for a long long long time. i don't like hardcovers since they're less convenient: they're heavy, don't fit in my purse, are hard to hold with one hand, and because they're generally much more expensive, i'm more careful with them. which is annoying. but i also feel like books in general are too expensive.

most of my friends who are big readers have some sort of e-book reader. but none of us use it as our primary reader because traditional books are just a million times better! add price on top of all that, and not one of us is willing to permanently make the switch. but i do know that if e-books were significantly cheaper than print books, we could definitely be swayed.

i remember in high school cds were like $17 each. then napster and itunes became popular, now most cds are less than $13. book publishers really need to learn from the music industry! cds were priced to match mp3 prices, and books should be priced to be comparable to e-book prices, not the other way around as it is currently. i recently read somewhere else that used bookstores are doing really good business, and it's because people won't (maybe can't?) afford to spend $16 on a paperback or $26 on a hardback when they can get it for half off.

june 2011

best american travel writing of 2008 [22-4]
marie winn - red-tails in love: a wildlife drama in central park [3-5]
robert k massie - nicholas and alexandra [6-13]
charles panati - extraordinary origins of everything things [13-23]
stefan fatsis - word freak: heartbreak, triumph, genius, and obsession in the world of competitive scrabble [23-29]
robert k massie - peter the great [30-]

scott pilgrim vs. the world (2010), x-men: first class, super 8 (2011) [10], transformers 3 (2011) [29]