My first encounter with digital books was quite early on in life. I got my own personal computer when I was 12, and with that, I started trying to read stories on PDFs and Word files. However, physical books have always had a special place in my life, and it wasn’t until much later that I had to start sharing my love for books among multiple formats.
I received the Kindle base model in the year 2016 as a farewell gift from my colleagues. I was obviously overjoyed and I tried to start reading on it immediately. However, something did not click. Over the next few years, that Kindle would fine itself in various states of neglect, even a long period where it was with a friend who had to remind me that I owned a Kindle when he returned it to me.
Last year, in 2020, as the lockdown started, I found myself using the Kindle more. Call it a need to try something new or the lure of certain Kindle book deals, but this time, something was different. I started off with Brandon Sanderson’s The Final Empire, Book 1 of the Mistborn Trilogy, and finished that soon after. This didn’t go unnoticed, and I received a Kindle Oasis as a gift from Deya for my birthday.
If the lockdown was the tipping point, the Oasis was the floodgates being opened. I was reading ebooks like never before. Currently, between ebooks and audiobooks, I am guilty of not engaging with a physical book for the longest time.
It is this transformation that I’ve tried to capture in the first episode of my podcast Read Write Insight. In this, I talk about what the journey felt like, what are the specific merits and demerits that either format carries for me, and what this tells me about my future reading habits. Here’s a link to the episode:
Let me know your thoughts on the topic in the comments below. What works for you – ebooks or physical books? What are your reasons for liking one over the other?
P.S You can also send me voice responses over at my Anchor.fm page
Arnab Mukherjee 