And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

Ecclesiastes 12:12

Anyone studying for an exam could testify that much study is truly a weariness of the flesh. Given that, a book written to a specific person would capture them to the point where they wish that it never ended. In the days of the Gutenberg printing press, all we had were physical books which were printed using metallic blocks of letters pressed against the paper or vellum. In this way was the first book ever printed, which is the Gutenberg Bible.

Personally, much of my reading is non-fiction as I don’t believe books of fiction provide any value apart from for entertainment and leisure. The Bible is the book with the first priority, followed by books on productivity, history, philosophy, career, etc..

Today, due to our technological advancements, we do not have to rely solely on reading from a physical book. In this post, I’ll be going over the two major mediums of books: Kindle and paperbacks

Paperbacks

This is the medium which hardcore bibliophiles would say that is the best. I would agree to that to a certain degree. The first reason for me being, they never go out of charge. There have been countless times when I am in the middle of an interesting piece and boom, the phone shuts down. With a paperback, I do not have to worry that that would happen. Unless and until I am able to carry it with me, and I don’t accidentally drop it in the river or make it catch fire, my reading would not be hindered. For this reason, I have a small selected collection of physical books on my shelf which I read from now and then.

But there is one problem. Remember I told you that unless I am able to carry it with me? Well, for the majority of the time, I cannot. Most of you reading this, are reading this on your phone, which is probably the only thing that you carry with you every day. For that reason, paperbacks might not be the best medium for all people.

Kindle books

Apart from the paperbacks and hardcovers I own, I also read books from the Kindle. The best thing about owning a Kindle instead of just reading the same eBook from the app on your phone is the screen. Kindle’s screen is designed to be less stressful to the eyes. This is so evident since even with the backlight increased in the night, the screen still feels like a normal book. For a guy who has to wear contact lenses, this is an awesome feature.

But people buy Kindle books for a variety of reason. The first being that you get to buy the digital versions of paperback books for less than half the price. When you consider a book for Rs. 2000 and it has a Kindle variant for Rs. 800, then that’s a no brainer to go with the latter. Also as you can see from the picture above, Kindle has a cool feature of giving the meaning of words that it feels would be hard for the reader to understand. With a paperback, you would search for a dictionary or Google the word to find the meaning, And of course with the Kindle, you have features such as highlighting sentences, making notes and sharing them to social media.

Special Mention: Audio Books

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been that comfortable with listening to audio books. That might be because, for me, I need to actively listen in order to comprehend what the narrator is saying. But I seem to find many people online who use that medium and seem to love it. That being said, I do listen to podcasts when in a run, as the one talking usually doesn’t go into deep details like how a book is written. Podcasts have a more conversational style to it than audiobooks which are basically 200-page books being narrated to you.

This might change in the future, and I might start listening to audiobooks. But until then, Kindle and paperback are the two mediums that I stick to for all reading purposes.