More on the e-reader, and some ghost stories

My post about the e-reader led to some questions in the comments, which I thought I'd answer with another post so you can see them easily.

Most people seemed to be expressing the same concerns about it that I had, that it's not the same as real books and could never replace them, which is true. It is an addition to my reading habits, not a replacement but I have found that now, even though the novelty has worn off, I am still using it. It is very useful to have in my work bag for my daily commmute as it is light and I don't have to worry about finishing a book, there's always something else to read. With the snow the other week, it was a comforting thought as I was panicking about being stuck in the city that at least I would have plenty to read if I did have to spend the night there.

It has not replaced real books though, I am still reading proper books at home. The habit that blogging has led me into of having several books on the go at once means that I don't mind having a commute book and then reading something different in the armchair at night.

To answer some questions, it is a reader only. If you are someone who likes to scribble notes in books it is not for you, there is no facility to do anything like that. I'm afraid I am someone who gets slightly queasy at the thought of my books being scribbled in (apart from recipe books where I have to note what works and translate American measures) so this is not something that worries me but I know that a lot of bloggers like to note bits they particularly enjoy in books as they go along. There is a bookmark facility where you can electronically dog the ear of the page to go back to it later, but this is as much personalisation as I've found it will allow. This may also make it less useful for textbooks for courses, as a highlighter pen won't be much use.

When it comes to ease of reading I have been amazed with it. The screen is not like a computer screen, it is easy on the eye. The change between pages annoyed me a little at first but I soon got used to it and now don't notice it. As for knowing how far you are through a book, each page has the page number out of the total pages at the bottom, so you know that you are, say, 188 pages through a total of 288. I have found that I lose myself in the text as much as a real book; after all it is the words that do that and as long as reading them is easy that's all that matters.

So I am a fan. That said, I would not like it if I had only the e-reader and no books. I love books as objects just as much as I ever did and this will never replace the feel, look and sometimes even smell of a real book. As I said, it is an addition to my habits and one that I think will allow me to access some works that I just can't get on paper, and for that reason I am very pleased with it.

An example of this is A Stable for Nightmares, a collection of Victorian ghost stories I found on Project Gutenburg. I stumbled across it because it was showing as a collection by J Sheridan Le Fanu, one of my favourite authors. As I did not recognise the title I popped it into my e-reader and it turned out to be a collection of stories by various authors. The only frustrating thing is that apart from Dickon the Devil, which I know is by Le Fanu and have read more than once before, I have no idea who the others are by. However, this doesn't stop it being a very enjoyable collection of stories if you are a fan of old style ghost stories, as I am.

I particularly enjoyed Devereux's Dream, a macabre story of how someone was able to avenge the murder of his wife and The Secret of the Two Plaster Casts, which was quite a gruesome story. Neither of these stories have an actual ghost in them, but they are very good despite this! It is a collection that is well worth a look if you have exhausted collections such as the Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories and want more. One of the stories in this collection is in that book (Pichon & Sons, of the Croix Rousse); when I recognised it I was hopeful that I could put at least one other author to a story, but unfortunately that book just lists it as by Anon.