Musings on the subject of e-readers

 

Because I was travelling for 3 weeks and had to lug my luggage about this year I invested in an e-reader (Nook Glowlight) to avoid the weight of several books (seriously weighed down with books on previous holidays, especially when we ent to the States and bought books over there). I had the 12 hour flight there and back as well as two other flights and a couple of long bus and train journeys so needed a lot of reading material.

 

I had to take back up material for take-off and landing (the excellent new Science uncovered magazine) which sadly I finished on the second flight I took on take-off which meant that I sat twiddling my thumbs on landing. Perhaps I should have taken a "spare" book after all. This is a bit of a drawback for e-readers but apparently the "no electronics" is going to be/is being relaxed so hopefully in the future this won’t be an issue.

 

The glowlight function came in handy on the train going through tunnels and on the plane on the way back which was an overnighter so am glad I was persuaded to invest the extra for it.

 

e-ink and the feel in the hand were fine although my cover was a bit rubbish and I had to hold it together with an elastic band (poor design from Nook although there is a better cover that I’ve seen so need to shell out some more cash I guess). It’s a nice feature (for my past 40 eyes) that you can change the font size. Overall I was happy to read books on the Nook. On the plus side I had a library of books on the Nook with more than enough to see me through the holiday. On the downside a few of the books were ARCs that I hadn’t made a note of what they were about and there is no easy clue from the book like a traditional paperback back cover blurb at the beginning (why don’t publishers do this?).

 

On the whole though a big thumbs up.