If I asked you to picture a book, any book you want, of any genre, of any length, by any author. What image pops into your mind? 

Is it a manuscript of pages bound with a spine and cover? Or is it a digital screen with lots of words and a page number at the bottom? 

Debates between fans of print books and e-books on which is the superior format have increased in the last decade as technology has progressed. Some view this debate as pointless because they see no real difference in the two, to them, reading is reading. 

Sure, technically you read a book in the same way whether it is in print or not. The pages are still in the same order and the story remains unchanged no matter the format. It is the reading experience that is changed depending on how you read.

The experience of holding a new book in your hands. Feeling the pages on your fingertips and the smell of parchment as you turn them. These types of things may not play a factor for many people when they decide to sit down and read a book, but to those that care, it really does. 

On the other hand, the idea of concerning yourself with the experience of reading rather than actually reading may seem silly to a highly practical mind. These highly logical people may argue that reading e-books on a device is both easier and more practical than carrying around a physical copy. 

Say you have a Kindle, a device specifically made for reading e-books on. An average Kindle can hold thousands of books and can fit easily into your bag when you leave the house. 

Comparatively, having thousands of print books could take an entire room of your house and leave you with little room for much else. In this regard, these practical minds have a point in their support of e-books. However, contrary to popular belief about the nature of being a reader,reading is not about being logical or practical in my opinion. 

Sure, you can read books that are able to educate you on any number of topics, making you more informed and thus a more intelligent person. But to me, reading is a personal connection between the author and the reader. It is a moment in time whereby an author puts down their story onto a page and a reader gets a window into that moment months or years after the fact. 

This is especially true in regards to works of fiction. Authors leave pieces of themselves on the pages of their work and readers are free to pick them up and interpret them in whatever way they choose. 

This focus on the experience of reading even extends into the act of shopping for books to read. The idea of walking through an actual book store, piled floor to ceiling with thousands upon thousands of books just waiting to be read is almost a spiritual experience to an avid reader. 

Scrolling through digital page after digital page littered with plot summaries and audience reviews and star ratings to try and find your next read feels far too impersonal to a reader like myself. 

If none of these emotional appeals and deeply dramatic descriptions of reading has won over the practical minded, pro e-book readers, a 2014 study by the International Journal of Educational Research concluded that readers using a Kindle were “significantly” worse at recalling events that occurred in a story than those who read the same material on paper. Reading comprehension and retention are higher across the board for readers who read in print rather than digitally.

There is both an emotional and logical case to be made for print books being the vastly superior method of reading. But of course, that’s just one man’s opinion. 

Categories: Opinion