Welcome back to the bricks, gamers and techies! For all those who have been keeping up with me for a while, it’s great to have you back for another semester. For all you newbies — hello! I’m a self-described nerd in all aspects of my life, but this column will focus on an aspect I think many of us share: video games and technology. I’m no expert by any means, but I’m a lady with a lot of opinions and I like having them heard.
As a tech columnist, I have a pretty embarrassing confession about my summer: I had a tech detox. Besides watching a minimal amount of Netflix on my laptop and playing Kim Kardashian: Hollywood (don’t pretend you didn’t get addicted to it either!), I pretty much stayed away from most things with a backlit screen when it wasn’t necessary for work.
This made me feel a little bit productive, because I put this extra time to good use: I read a heck of a lot of books. I’m a big bookworm, but reading usually gets put behind most other things in my life during school, so it was a nice change of pace.
As a techie, one would think I would be all over the move to eBooks. They’re more economical! They can hold an entire library in the tiny device! They look so trendy and you can put a cute case on it!
Wrong, wrong, wrong: I hate eBooks. Sure, I’m a techie, but I’m a bookworm first. It’s probably for the same reason that I prefer to pick up a magazine or newspaper instead of reading the article online; there’s something non-replaceable about reading the written word as it was meant to be — written or printed on a page.
I’ll admit, I haven’t had a ton of experience with e-readers. I tried to read a few classics on my iPad, but I was distracted by the bright light and the other apps I knew I could be playing on the device.
I’ll give Kindle and Nook some credit: they both have the “real-page feel,” where your eyes don’t strain with a brightly-lit screen. Books do seem to be cheaper on the devices, and it’s much easier to buy a book on your device instead of going to the store or ordering it online and waiting for it to ship.
But there is just something wrong about e-books to me. Trust me: I love playing games on my computer or Xbox, I do most of my writing on my laptop and I’m always attached to my phone. I hopped on the tablet trend as soon as the first iPad came out and I love using tech.
In my opinion, books were made to be read on paper. There is something you just can’t replace about the feel of holding them and flipping the pages. Browsing a bookstore has a much different feel than browsing an app store.
This often becomes a prob- lem for me in school, when textbooks or required readings are only available online. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but give me a real book! Even when the reading is online to make it easier on the professor and students, I find myself printing it off anyway so I can have a hard copy to make notes on. Even when it’s a horribly boring reading, I get much less distracted if I’m holding it in my hand rather than reading it off a screen.
Sophie Kruse is a junior studying journalism and a staff writer for The Post. Do you like e-readers? Email her at sk139011@ohio.edu
