07: Books, E-Books, and Audio-Books: Or My Literary Addiction

I've always been an avid reader. This isn't a casual statement. From childhood on, I've devoured multiple books a week. I'm usually working on more than one book at a time. At least one rides around in my shoulder bag and more live on my bedside table.

I love library books and highly recommend you visit your local library, but I have a hard time with the return process. If I enjoy a book, I grow attached to it and want to keep it. This results in me buying a lot of books. There are bookshelves in most of the rooms of my house. My book collection makes my friends fear me ever moving house again. I'm pretty sure they'll charge me more than a pot of chili and a few beers next time. Used bookstores and second hand websites have kept this habit from bankrupting me.

When I was younger, it wasn't usual for me to be carrying a huge backpack full of gaming, fiction, and research books. It was even worse when I was in high school and university. Many of my friends and family members couldn't pick up this thing that I schlepped with me everywhere. The roller backpack was the coolest invention of it's day.

If you've read or watched 'Fahrenheit 451,' you are familiar with the warning about dependency on electronic media. They are easily manipulated or deleted by authoritarians of any stripe. This warning kept me away from e-books and audio-books for a very long time. As the people around me were picking up the new Rocketbooks, then Sony e-readers, then Kindles/Nooks; I continued to schlep that heavy bag around.

Regular airplane travel for work and pleasure forced me to change my reading habits. Previously, I'd mostly traveled via car or train. Baggage weight limits were never an issue. When I did fly, it was for conventions or to family events where I was too busy to do much reading or a house full of books was waiting for me. Both work trips and vacations result in me spending more idle time in a hotel room than conventions do and airplanes have weight limits. I got my first e-reader and a friend who'd scanned their entire library while recovering from an injury sent me the zip file. I've since found a lot of resources for legal free e-books.

I've since added audio-books into my habits due to my no longer working with the public. My workday is largely spent digging through data, building reports, and working on forecasting. I can't read or look at other things, but I needed something to break up the silence. Podcasts and music worked for some time, but I needed something else to add to the rotation. The library checks out audio-books directly to your device. There are also sources for legal and free audio-books, but they are frequently fan read. So this means the sound quality isn't always the best. I've included links to several free e-book and audio-book resources on my "Geek and Political Resources Page."

The more I thought about the form of media issue, the more I realized that I was misinterpreting the message of 'Fahrenheit 451.' It was more about dependency on easily consumable media like television and film. Those media do all of the work for you. Audio-books and e-books are still dependent on the imagination of the reader or listener. As to the destructibility of the media source, all it takes is one house fire and your entire paper library is gone. Looking at something as ubiquitous as the Bible teaches you that paper books can be corrupted, as well. How many different versions of that are there?

At it's core, I still prefer paper books. I love how they smell and feel, especially older books. This doesn't stop me from using other resources, as well. When I travel, it's much easier to take my e-reader loaded up with all the books I'll read on the trip. When I'm at work, I can listen to a book instead of the folks taking phone calls a few feet away from me. If I like an e-book or audio-book enough, I buy the paper book. Sometimes, I'm even working on the same book in all three formats.

I don't care what format you use, read.