Reading? Digitally yours!

Don’t get me wrong: I love to read. I don’t remember as far as Primer’s and LadyBird Books, but I remember primary school books that included the Eze Goes to Schools of this world. They formed my mind.So did the book Air Force Cadet. Air force planes and pilots in the book and out of […]

Don’t get me wrong: I love to read. I don’t remember as far as Primer’s and LadyBird Books, but I remember primary school books that included the Eze Goes to Schools of this world. They formed my mind.
So did the book Air Force Cadet. Air force planes and pilots in the book and out of it didn’t matter a hoot to me, but the hero Ola’s sojourn from selection to passing out a cadet was the main reason I wanted to join the air force immediately after reading the book age 12. Back then I held it in my hand, thumbed it till it was dog-eared, even sometimes licked a finger so I could pick up the pages. The blue cover impressed me no end: it was my coming-of-age book.
I may have grown into bigger books but Air Force Cadet, now lost to me as the dream to be a pilot, whips up my nostalgia.
So imagine my shock and glee when I chanced upon an electronic copy of Air Force Cadet. Still there were the blue cover, the pencilstroke illustrations, but I couldn’t hold it in hand. Instead, I needed a username to read it on Googlebooks, or take it onto Google Drive. If I wanted to own it, I could always transfer it onto an electronic reader, and the book was mine to read in the comfort of my bed.
Ebooks are not as simplistic as key sound, but they can be. I have been dealing with them for a handful of years now, and they haven’t disappointed me yet. To put it bluntly, paper has no place for me. I have closed my postbox because I don’t expect paper mails. Email are just fine. I would rather download digital versions of books than handle printed versions. All I need is an internet connection and a screen.
Once a friend needed to send me his manuscript for proofreading, and while he sweated over having to print dozens of pages, I told him, “If you want me to really do it, send the document via email.”
That’s where my notoriety, steeped in the digital revolution that’s supposed to drive reading culture and close out print books. The way I see it, any book is readable electronically—html, txt, doc and pdf let you do that. But developers have made ebooks more than just a document on your PC: they have become full-fledged products, sometimes new technologies onto themselves.
Up until 2012, developers caught in the ebook format war churned out ebook formats faster than people were reading. I was caught in a labyrinth, chasing after the software—Kindle, Mobipocket, PalmBooks, required for each format and downloading a couple of the new formats to try on the app.
In addition to the four formats I started out with, I have tried lit, oeb, bbeb, prc, azw, dnl, pdb. I would download a single book in all formats available just so I could see which format best suited me. That was on PC. I later discovered dedicated ereaders—the Kindles and Kobos of this world. All of this would later form part of my university dissertation and the basis for a journal article.
At the height of my ebook craze, I had some 20 different reading apps and nearly 10,000 books on my PC hard drive. If they were hardcopies, I’d pay through the nose to keep a library store.
Later I pared them down to best two or three apps, and deleted incompatible formats. When I discovered ereaders, I installed an ebook library manager to keep track of different books and different formats and only converting the books I wanted to read into formats compatible with my ereader.
So reading for me goes this way. I download Americanah in epub format, transfer it onto my ereader and begin reading, pressing a button or touching the screen to flip pages.
And I don’t even have to be home: I can flip out an ereader on a bus, a park, walking in the same manner I flip out a mobile phone. And, oh, mobile phones are the new ereaders these days!
If I leave off any point in the book, I place a bookmark and return to the exact page next time.
I don’t need candlelight when power goes; the display is bright enough for night reading. And I can change both font and font size as I please.
I find a strange word, I click on it and it links to a dictionary, with speech function to pronounce the word.
I find a particularly hilarious passage about whether you boil or fry a hotdog (or is it sausage?), I highlight and share on social media.
And to buy the book in the first, I didn’t even have to walk into a bookshop. All I needed was an internet connection and access to an online bookstore.
Pretty simple, right? Wrong. The world of digital reading is complicated. Many formats have gone out of use, and existing ones are adjusting to stay in competition. The print-is-out, ebooks-are-the-future talk might be a dead horse, but ebooks aren’t dead.
That doesn’t mean print is dead. My buddies still big on hardcopy books have their argument. Books have resale value: I found old, used books useful. Books are easy to read for those who have problems reading from a backlit screen or using devices that lack e-ink technology. With print, you don’t even need any device in the first place, neither do you need batteries or have to recharge them. Print books don’t need warranties: you particularly need those if your ereader breaks or you need to re-download an ebook file that mysteriously is deleted from your device.
And print comes with tradition. Think the comforting smell of paper, the weight of a good book in your hand. The tactile temptation is one area ebooks are still hoping to catch up. Having ebooks that flip like live pages is the digital world’s lame efforts to copy mimic print books.
I acknowledge the merits of a print book, and maybe I prefer ebooks because I can handle, afford and access them. Without an internet connection, a PC, an ereader, I probably would be singing a different tune. Or I would be reading the 10,000 titles I have on my 4GB ereader until my battery runs out. That is, if I’m listening to the audiobook version or watching a video on the device. It is the new world of reading, digitally.